Elation lights virtual summer camp
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In order to relieve the disappointment and give kids a fun and engaging experience, WinShape has been working with Stacked Hearts Productions to create an engaging virtual experience, ON, that brings the fun of summer camp directly into homes.
The virtual experience broadcasts live eight hours a day, five days a week from a gymnasium on the WinShape campus in Rome, Georgia. Peter Streiff, president of Stacked Hearts Productions, a full-service events and production firm based in Atlanta, has worked with WinShape Camps for a number of years. He and his crew have stayed busy through the five-week camp by broadcasting a morning show, an end-of-day show, worship segments, games and field activities, as well as Thursday night shows for K-6 and 7-12 graders complete with bands.
The segments are broadcast from three different sets – a performance set, host set and theme set – all purpose-built and housed within the gymnasium building. All three sets are lit using LED lighting from Elation Professional, along with other lighting, supplied to WinShape by Elite Multimedia of Nashville. Streiff and Stacked Heart Productions provided the primary set and lighting design for the three sets with a portion of the performance set design done by Scott Moore of Go Live Productions of Nashville.
Mike Marcario handles on-site lighting direction and programming and says ON has been both fun and unique as it requires many different looks and feels from the same rig. He explains the setup: “The morning show divides the set into three unique spaces – ‘host lower’ which is used for host games and host interactions with guests, ‘host upper’ which is used for the desk and interview segments, and ‘performance stage’ which is used for games and music performances. At times, all three divisions are used simultaneously with live transitions between them. The night show however divides the set even further, dividing the ‘host upper’ set into three spaces for various vignettes.”
“When designing our performance set we talked about designing a dense matrix that, although simple, has a lot of dynamics to it,” comments Peter Streiff of Stacked Hearts Productions. “We chose the small ACL 360i single-beam mover and use 144 of those in a 12 x 12 matrix to really bring that space to life. It allowed us to build a lot of different concert looks, from a matrix wall to a low or high trim matrix ceiling. It has been so dynamic across the board and has been massively impactful from prerecorded elements to the real time stream. It shows that something so simple, when done well, can be a very dynamic, and strong element.”
The performance space uses a different lighting floor package for each night show, consisting of varying combinations of Artiste DaVinci, Platinum Seven and Rayzor 360Z fixtures. “I’ve enjoyed the Artiste DaVinci’s gobo selection, optics quality, low power draw, and brightness since I first used it two years ago,” Marcario says. “It’s only ever acted as a stage or floor profile on rigs on which I’ve spec’d it, but this gig is the first time I’ve used it in a key light application. Color correction and focus took very little time and was surprisingly consistent across all fixtures. That, in addition to its even field and frost, makes it a great choice for front and back light.”
On the host set, a flexible studio space that hosts a lot of the younger kid programming, rich colours from fixtures like the Rayzor 360Z moving head wash help give it a classic TV studio feel.
Although the gymnasium is large enough to house such varied sets, working with over 360 lighting fixtures plus LED panels in a building that is not a dedicated production venue meant Streiff had to deal with both power and weight limitations. “It’s good to have LED for the lower power draw,” he says. “Our entire service for the building is 200 amps so working within those parameters, making sure our power isn’t overdrawn and we’re not blowing circuits in the middle of a broadcast, has been a very critical piece.”
The WinShape Camps ON virtual summer camp, has been a success with good attendance and many kids signing up for a second or third week. Streiff concludes, “It’s nice to see a lot of kids engaged in what has been a tough season for everyone, and it allows parents to organize part of their summer as well. It’s been a great experience to be a part of.”
