When it comes to creating “special effects” to reinforce the message, the task will fall to a church's lighting designer. So the best lighting set up for churches is one that fits the needs of the lighting designer, who has the most flexibility in creating powerful images.
These special effects may include images of fire, explosions, lightning, smoke, haze, water, fog, and almost any other visual effect outside of costumes and scenery. (Notice I did not mention pyro effects. This is because pyrotechnics requires a license and special training.)
With your help, a church lighting designer has some of the most elaborate tools to create these theatrical effects. Unlike 40 years ago when all designers had in their toolbox were Lekos, Fresnels, Par Cans, (all controlled by manual light boards), we now have extremely sophisticated and powerful moving lights, incredibly bright color changing strobe lights, and lighting desks that can create complex multiple random strobe sequences.
Creating emotion, elusive and obtainable
We now have individually controlled LED fixtures that can be bitmapped and controlled by video signals through media servers. With these, church lighting designers can create effects like slow moving sunsets across the cyc, or shifting light like clouds moving across the sun, or shifting moonlight through trees with shadows of branches and leaves moving across the stage. All this, plus the introduction of powerful video projectors into the world of lighting design, has expanded designers' abilities to create effects that were unthinkable 20 years ago.
We now have individually controlled LED fixtures that can be bitmapped and controlled by video signals through media servers.
For the church lighting designer, it all comes down to what they want their audience to “feel.”
Helping churches consider video
The advancement of video in lighting designs is another important thing lighting designers consider when creating special effects. Video can create both literal and expressionistic images on the worship stage. It is crucial that church lighting designers consider this when they create special effects.
Video can create both literal and expressionistic images on the worship stage.
Let's consider an example where a pastor asks the lighting designer to create a visual of lightning on the stage. Again, their task is all about the mood and how we as human beings react to visual stimuli when watching a show. The lightning they create with the lighting fixtures and controller is inspired from the core essence of the realistic lightning they remember in their sense memory ... it’s a theatricalized effect that will inspire that feeling in the audience. This is a reason why theatre is such an effective art form.
If they mix in video of an actual lightning bolt, chances are that they will send contradicting visual effects to the audience, making the effect as a whole subconsciously confusing and ineffective. This is a common mistake that lighting and video artists make. This summer the video artist for one of the shows I designed used images of actual fire in the videos. I had to match the lighting effects I used to support the fire in the same style of the video. This meant a less expressionistic approach to the fire effect.
As this theatre suffers from electrical disruptions that have knocked out video in the past, we created an alternative cue stack that only used moving lights to fill in for the event that the video effects could not be used. In designing these alternative cues and effects, the director and I were amazed at how affective the cues were using only the conventional and moving light sources. I explained to the director and video designer my theory above, and I believed they had epiphanies about mixing video and stage lighting styles. Sometimes you have to see it to understand it.
Smoke, fog and haze in the church setting
The lighting designer is also responsible for atmospheric effects. And of course, there are big differences between smoke, haze and fog. Smoke is created by machines that employ a liquid that is heated and dispersed in the atmosphere. Smoke is dense and billows, not unlike smoke from a fire. When it passes through beams of light you usually see smoke movement in the air. Not unlike what you see from an actual fire.
The [church] lighting designer is also responsible for atmospheric effects. And of course, there are big differences between smoke, haze and fog.
If lighting designers want to just see the beams of light in the atmosphere with no air movement, then they want to use a haze machine. Haze machines also use a liquid that is heated, but it produces a very fine mist that is almost invisible. This is dispersed throughout the stage with the help of the HVAC and portable fans.
Fog is a dense, low-hanging moving cloud. Think of the typical dry ice fog used in Swan Lake or other romantic ballets. It is usually created through dropping dry ice into a barrel of heated water. You can also create theatrical fog with modern machines that use CO2 in conjunction with their water-based chemical fluid.
And speaking of chemicals, be sure to do your research and advise church clients to only use smoke, haze and fog machines that have been approved by respected organizations such as Actors Equity. Most machines use fluid that is mixed from water and glycol. Some cheaper machines use chemicals they will not wish to expose their performers or audience to. To be sure, they should ask for the machine’s and the fluid’s Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS).
As designers and specifiers, you might advise them to play with some of the pre-programmed chases in the lighting desk, try using the media server to fire up some sophisticated movement effects....
Twenty-first-century technology has afforded the lighting designer some amazing tools to create powerful special effects. The best way for them to explore these effects is through experimentation. As designers and specifiers, you might advise them to play with some of the pre-programmed chases in the lighting desk, try using the media server to fire up some sophisticated movement effects, and to watch a lot of designs outside of their house of worship for ideas. They will be amazed at how creative they can be just focusing on the essence of the emotional reaction they want to create, and at how powerful their tools are that you specified.
