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Photos courtesy of Hope Community Church, Raleigh, NC
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Photos courtesy of Hope Community Church, Raleigh, NC
There is a feeling of excitement as you walk into a dim movie theater. You find your seat and wait for the latest blockbuster to begin on the big screen—the lights to go out and the darkness of the room to make the moving images "pop" off the screen.
While this is great for a Saturday night movie, it's not so great for a Sunday morning sermon. While the movie theater lighting works great for a night at the movies, it doesn't work as well for church. And each week many portable churches face this, or a similar situation; they are in a room with poor lighting. Of course, it isn't just those who meet in movie theaters, meeting in a gym can be equally bad since sports lighting can be very stark and harsh. So when you are a portable church what can be done with lighting to create an inviting environment, and what challenges are you going to encounter?
Lighting Requirements
Generally speaking, lighting for a portable church is no different than lighting in a permanent building. In both instances we use lighting so we can see the people on the stage. We use lighting to highlight people and things to call special attention to them. We use light to set the mood, and we use light to make a scene look attractive or interesting. The main difference is that lighting for a portable church has to be capable of being set up and taken down each week.
Just like a permanent installation, we start our design by determining what artistic elements we want to put in our room. Once we have that artistic plan in place, we work to strike a balance with the technical elements of power, hang positions, control, and fixtures that are required for the lighting system to work—as well as to make it portable.
Lighting uses a good deal of power, and while the use of LED fixtures uses much less power than traditional incandescent fixtures, they still require power. One of first things that you are going to need to research is how much power you have to use in your meeting place. Remember that just because a room has many outlets doesn't mean it has an abundance of power, since one circuit might feed all of those outlets.
After you get a better understanding of how much power you have in your room, you will need to figure up how much power your equipment will use. Remember that audio, video projectors, computers, and coffee pots figure into the equation—not just the lighting gear. If you don't have enough power you may want to consider having an electrician run additional power run into your meeting place.
Hang Positions
The next consideration would be hang positions. Where are you physically going to place the lighting fixtures? Ideally you will want to get the lights into such a position that they can be pointed down on the platform at roughly a 45-degree angle, so they don't blind the people on the stage.
How you hang the lights will depend on the conditions of your room. You might use a crank lift or pipe-and-base system to hang the lights on. Maybe you will set up truss towers or hang truss from the ceiling each week. Ideally, if you could hang them from the ceiling you would get the best lighting angles, adequate coverage, and you could possible eliminate the weekly set up and tear down if you could leave them in place. This may mean that each week you would just have to turn on the power to the fixtures and connect your data lines to them.
It's always worth developing a relationship with the building staff to see if you can mount some equipment and leave it in place. I have worked with portable churches that were able to mount their lighting fixtures, video projectors, and PA speakers. This cost them more money on the front end of the project, but saved many hours of set up and tear down, not to mention wear and tear on people and equipment.
Fixture Selection
Once you have power and hang positions you need some fixtures to light your room. There are two primary routes you can take with fixtures, the incandescent route and the LED route. The direction you decide to go depends on how much power you have available and how much money you have in your budget. While incandescent fixtures require more power, they cost a lot less and you can put together a fairly workable system on a tight budget. On the flip side of the coin are LED fixtures that require much less power and can give you more flexibility, especially when using color-changing fixtures, but the technology comes at a much higher price. You may also go with a combination of fixtures, such as incandescent fixtures for your front light, LED for backlight, and scenic pieces for their color changing capabilities.
When looking at fixture choices don't forget to consider “house” lighting. Going back to my initial movie theater and gym example, you might need to include some type of fixture to augment what is already installed in the room to make the environment more conducive to worship. This may mean that you have to have a few fixtures to light the audience area somehow. Maybe you hang them or place them on the floor and bounce the light off the walls or ceiling. Once again, this will all depend on your space—but this small detail can make a huge difference in the overall feel of the room.
Control Issues
Regardless of what fixtures you choose, some type of control will be needed. At its most basic level, control might consist of a small box with buttons on it that store preset lighting looks, while on the high end it may be a full-blown dedicated control console. What I tend to see most for portable churches is some type of computer-based console running on a laptop computer since this set up tends to give you the control capability of a large console in a compact package. Ultimately, what you choose needs to be based on the fixtures you choose and on how much control is needed.
With a portable lighting system, there are some special circumstances you need to be aware of. These are circumstances you may not ordinarily encounter in a dedicated building, but that you will encounter with a portable system.
Portable Gear Concerns
First, you have to protect your equipment and make it portable. Good cases are a must. You are going to spend substantial money on equipment and you don't want it to get destroyed in transport.
You are going to be setting up and tearing down this equipment and moving it from point A to point B many times. While it is tempting to buy inexpensive equipment, you need to factor build quality into the equation. While a “DJ” fixture is inexpensive, these fixture types usually are not built to withstand the rigors of the road. While you aren't touring the equipment per se, it is going to have to withstand the abuse of the road. There is a reason that rental companies tend to purchase the “Pro” gear and not the “DJ” gear. Rental companies need durable equipment.
In addition to durable fixtures, your power cables also need to be durable. National Electrical Code, which usually is adopted as law in most municipalities, requires SOOW-rated or Extra Hard Usage Cable to be used in a portable staging situation. This means that most extension cords that you can buy at the hardware store are not legal to use to power your lights, audio, and video equipment. Yes, you might get away with it, but if your fire marshal is strict you might be shut down. So be sure to budget for the heavy-duty power cables.
Your next investment should be in quality data cables. The rigors of set up and tear down, as well as the high probability of the cables being stepped on and rolled over, tend to quickly take their toll on cheap cable. Data is the lifeblood of a lighting system, and you want to make sure you have good cable for it to travel down. Most data issues are associated with cables that have failed, and good cable minimizes these failures. In addition, don't forget to have some spare cables on hand to make a quick swap when a cable does fail.
In a portable setup a good optically isolated data splitter is a must. Not only will it shorten your cable runs, but it also helps minimize data issues. A data splitter will allow you to run one data cable from your console to the splitter and then run multiple cables in different directions from the splitter out to your lights. It will also regenerate your data, giving the lights a clean signal while it isolates the various data runs from each other. So if you do have a failure, instead of the whole system going down, only the bad segment goes down.
Of course when you do have data issues you will want to have a good DMX data tester. When the rig isn't working and you are crunched for time, a tester will pay for itself in time saved in diagnosing the problem, and is key to getting back up and running quickly.
A DMX tester will tell you if your console is sending out valid DMX data, can test cables, and some can even stand in for a console, both for testing and as a backup in case of a failure.
Remember, in a portable situation time will always be your enemy, so be sure to spend both the prep time and money to do what you can to minimize the amount of time required for set up, troubleshooting, and tear down. Marking your cases, cables and fixtures in a logical manner goes a long way toward helping accomplish this. Color code and number everything and have diagrams of your setup. Anything you can do to make the process faster should be done. Also, use semi-permanent techniques like colored tape and markers in the beginning. After you have loaded in and out a few times you might come up with a better way to do things. If so, you want to be able to easily change your markings.
Theft Prevention
Lastly you are going to make a substantial investment in gear, so be sure to protect it from theft. Almost weekly I hear about a church, production company, or band that has had a trailer full of equipment stolen. I recommend against putting your church name on your trailer. While the graphics look great, they scream, “I'm full of expensive equipment—come steal me.” Purchase an alarm for your trailer that has a GPS tracking system that will alert you and text you if the trailer moves or is opened. This can help you get the police to your trailer quickly and aid in recovering your equipment if your trailer is stolen. In addition, be sure to have an inventory of equipment with serial numbers, for insurance, and for law enforcement purposes, and place a property identification sticker on each item.
Overall, lighting for a portable church is more difficult than building a lighting system for a permanent installation. But with good planning and the correct equipment you can minimize problems and create a system that meets your needs. One that quickly and easily goes together and comes apart week after week.
