At the hub of the building is Real Life Church's main sanctuary, an amphitheatre-style auditorium that seats 1,200. In addition to accommodating worship services, the room was required to function as a video studio, as well as a venue where community musical and theatrical productions could be staged, said Richard Rutherford, Rutherford Design (Northridge, CA), designer/supplier of the building's audio, video and theatrical lighting systems.
"The church is very media savvy," said Rutherford, who was involved in the project from day one. "They shoot everything in hi-def video - 16:9 widescreen ratio. Their media director really understands what it takes to create good quality video." This meant lighting would take on supreme importance, Rutherford added. "It's like the old joke goes, 'There are only three important things for video - lighting, lighting and lighting.'"
The lighting system had to be able to handle professional stage shows and concerts as well. With so much emphasis on video, the church's media staff wanted to include conventional lights "to boost the horsepower" for TV production, said Rutherford. But other key components of Real Life Church's all-important stage lighting system include LED par cans and automated moving heads from Elation Professional.
Twenty Elation Opti RGBs, a colour-mixing LED par can, form the basis of the stage's side and back lighting. Operating on seven DMX channels, the Opti RGB is a high-output unit that contains 24 powerful 1-watt red, green and blue LEDs (eight of each colour) and features full RGB mixing and dimming capabilities.
Because of the high vertical level of the seating in the amphitheater, barn doors are used on all the Opti RGBs. "If you're seated at the back of the house, you're just a few feet below the sight level of the fixtures. So we put barn doors on them to hide the colour-mixing 'magic,' so to speak, so that people would just see the end result of the color on stage."
In addition to the Opti RGB, Rutherford used four of Elation's Power Spot 575 DMX moving heads on the front of house truss to light up the many musical and theatrical performances held at Real Life Church.
(Jim Evans)
