Shoreline City Church celebrates with Robe
- Details
The church asked Josh Beard and Jacob Vanvlymen from Houston, Texas-based production design specialist Visual Edge to create a memorable production design.
They chose Robe BMFL moving lights – a mix of BMFL Blades, BMFL WashBeams and BMFL FollowSpots – to be at the core of the lighting rig.
Visual Edge was initially asked to present some design ideas which would incorporate lighting and video by SCC’s technical director Jeremy Hix. Three concepts were presented and one selected in which automation was also central to the design.
Taking into account the idiosyncrasies of a socially distanced audience, Josh and Jacob knew the importance of the design being “immersive” and able to reach out and touch everyone in the room, transferring the energy and action of everything happening onstage.
Automation helped achieve this, allowing completed shifts in the stage architecture and plenty of visual surprises that could be revealed throughout the event.
Movement also enabled “supersizing” the rig at key moments to make the environment look and feel huge, sweeping everyone up and into it. Furthermore, working in conjunction with a large ‘blow-through’ LED screen upstage, it helped create a series of unique performance spaces to highlight the different artists.
BMFLs were chosen for their power, dynamics, and multiple features. “We knew they would work perfectly for the job, so it was really a no brainer,” stated Jacob, adding that he and Josh were also keen on having continuity across the fixtures, hence the
The eight BMFL WashBeams were deployed on the upstage part of the super-grid, where they were ideal for strong artist back light, matching perfectly in quality, texture, and light output with the BMFL Blades.
The four BMFL FollowSpots were all on the key lighting truss.
“We loved the idea of not using conventional arena follow spots,” explained Jacob, “so the RoboSpot option was a great solution that worked flawlessly”. It also allowed the operators to focus fully on following the artists without any distractions.
The BMFL FollowSpots were operated via four RoboSpot BaseStations located just behind the stage, with comms to FOH key light operator Ian Berkman who ensured that levels were tweaked and adjusted as needed.
The lighting vendor was Upstaging. The event’s production manager was Jonathan Woelfel and video, and audio was supplied by DPS and Deep South Production respectively.
