Thanks to some help from Maryland-based Gadget Media and Elation Professional lighting, Hollowell Church was able to convert its existing gymnasium into an adequately-sized part-time worship centre at a fraction of the cost of constructing a new facility.
"The church had initially drawn up plans to build a larger worship facility, and it would have been a very nice building, but construction costs were skyrocketing at the time. What they conveyed to me was that if they built it, they wouldn't have had any budget left over to do the outreach programs they really wanted to do. So it made sense to remodel the gym instead," said Steve Christiano of Gadget Media, which handled the architectural design, as well as lighting, sound and video, for the 18-month project.
In addition to budget constraints, versatility was a key consideration in the remodeling plans, since the facility would have to do double-duty as both a gym and a place of worship. When designing the lighting system, Christiano found a solution that was both economical and flexible enough to handle the room's multipurpose requirements: LEDs and automated lights from Elation Professional.
The lighting system used in the church's new part-time worship facility includes the following Elation products: 18 Opti Tri Par LED par cans; six ELED Strip RGBW LED strip lights; 14 Opti Par conventional stage pars; four Design Spot 575 575-watt moving head spots; four Power Spot 700 CMY II 700-watt moving head spots; and two Design Spot 1400E 1400-watt moving heads.
Christiano had demo-ed the Elation LEDs shortly before being called in on the Hollowell project and, "I fell in love with them," he said. "I thought they were excellent, and looking at the church's needs, they just seemed like a perfect fit."
The stage lighting setup is 'all-LED', built around the Opti Tri Par, an RGB DMX par can powered by 18 of Elation's revolutionary Tri-Color (red, green and blue) 3-watt LEDs, which provide smoother color mixing than single-color LEDs and do not create multi-colour shadows.
With the church on a tight budget, the low energy requirements of LEDs were another factor in the decision to use them for stage lighting. Not only have the Opti Tri Par and ELED Strip RGBW helped the church save on its electric bills, drawing only 70W and 75W respectively at full power, they also helped hold down the initial cost of the remodel project. "Because LEDs drastically reduced the power requirements, they also substantially reduced the amount of work that needed to be done by an electrician, which was a big area of savings - and one that's often overlooked," Christiano pointed out.
(Jim Evans)
