Peoples Church Stretches Its Lighting Looks—And Budget—With LED Moving Heads From ADJ

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Peoples Church, Fresno, Calif. Image courtesy of ADJ.

True to its name, Peoples Church has been committed to serving people of all ages and walks of life since it was established nearly 60 years ago. A non-denominational Christian congregation, its expansive Fresno, Calif., campus is home to a private high school, as well as the Peoples Church School of Creative Arts (PCSA), which provides instruction on using music, lighting and choreography in the elaborate holiday productions that are put on by church members.

In keeping with its emphasis on creative arts, Peoples Church allots a small technology budget each year to upgrading its stage lighting. This year, Chadwell D. Hopper of CDH Productions used LED Moving Heads from ADJ Lighting to help the church achieve an updated visual look while staying within its lighting budget, just in time for their Easter production.

“Peoples Church was looking to transition from a traditional stage lighting look to something a little more contemporary,” explains Hopper, who does production, stage and scenic design for the church's seasonal shows. “Also, their holiday productions are taking on more of a concert feel, and they wanted their auditorium to be able to accommodate that, yet at the same time remain a suitable environment for Sunday worship services.”

Multiple services, multiple objectives

Adding to this challenge, Peoples Church doesn’t’t hold just one type of worship service each Sunday. Three distinctively different services are presented in its 2,000-seat auditorium at different times—an early traditional service, a service that features more contemporary music, and finally an even more progressive “experience” aimed at the younger set.

“Peoples Church was looking to transition from a traditional stage lighting look to something a little more contemporary.”

Chadwell D. Hopper

CDH Productions

To meet these multiple objectives, Hopper devised a flexible stage design that utilizes a large projection screen, a backdrop of black draperies, and new LED lighting—most notably ADJ’s Inno Color Beam LED, a high-performance RGBW color-mixing LED moving head fixture. “I installed some drop pipes (behind the stage), and the church purchased some black draperies so they can blackout the stage area for concerts and theatrical productions. Then for regular worship services, they can remove the black drapes and return to a more traditional look,” says Hopper.

Between the black drape segments on each side of the stage, Hopper installed a mesh screen material to serve as a background for the ADJ Inno Color Beam LEDs. The Inno Beams are mounted on six wire ladders in front of the mesh panels, giving the appearance that they are suspended in mid-air. There are nine Inno Beams on each side of the stage, evenly spaced in rows of three, for a total of 18 fixtures. “They wanted to do something more edgy this year, so I came up with the idea of having the lights literally floating in the air and they really liked it,” says Hopper.

Energy and money savings

Church officials also like the versatility and performance of the Inno Color Beam LED. The energy-efficient, 108-watt fixture is equipped with 36 x 3-watt high-quality CREE LEDs (eight red, 10 green, 10 blue and eight white) for bright, smooth RGBW-blended colors. It produces the intense beam that’s popular in today’s lighting designs, along with a full range of movement (630-degree pan, 220-degree tilt), exciting built-in programs, 0%-100% dimming, and a strobe/pulse effect. It also offers plenty of pro features and user options, such as three operational modes (DMX, Sound-Active, Master-Slave), a four-button DMX menu system, and maintenance-free, 50,000-hour LEDs.

“The church is very happy with the bright light output of the Inno Color Beams—and the fact that you can see these lights anywhere in the room with a minimal amount of haze,” says Hopper. “They also like the concept that you can use them to wash the stage or create effects with them. During their traditional Sunday service, they use the lights to color the stage, keeping it very subdued. Then as each service progresses, they build up into more of an ‘experience’ feel.”

Perhaps most of all, Peoples Church officials were thrilled with the lighting value they received for their dollar. “In the past, the church often favored purchasing used lighting so that they could stretch their limited budget as far as possible,” says Hopper. “For the cost of two used moving lights from a large manufacturer, they were able to afford these 18 new ADJ Inno Color Beam LEDs. We also looked at purchasing another manufacture’s lights used, and for the same cost, we could have gotten a dozen with no warranty. Here we got basically the same performance with high-quality CREE LEDs—I was very impressed with that and with ADJ’s three-year warranty. You’re getting a product that’s brand-new and is covered by a warranty, and in the designer’s eye it’s the same light.”

See how CDH Productions transformed the Peoples Church stage with ADJ LED Moving Heads in this video interview:

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