New Installation in Auditorium(Don’t know if this is allowed in this specific part, remove if not please)

[BethelAssembly]

I am not home right now to give pictures, but our church just built a new building and they asked me to do the stage lighting.


The stage will be 20 feet wide and 10-15 feet from the back to the front (up against the wall), and only 1-2 foot high off the ground.


The lights will be mounted 17 feet high and about 20 feet from the front of the stage horizontally.


We were quoted for 8 of the CHAUVET DJ EVEP 160


RGBW to cover this area. Offset mounted for cross lighting of course.


Is this overkill? I was looking at the lights over at Pro Church Lights, but I am honestly a volunteer and don't understand all their specs they talk about there.

The room itself is huge, but the stage is the only area that we are going to have to light with stage specific lights, the rest of the room will be dim pot lights.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you all so much!!

 

[techieman33]

They might work, they might not. Without knowing how your going to use the space it's hard to judge. Are these just for color with other lights being used for white light? Are their cameras involved? Is there any kind of projection screen or any other video on the wall? What's the budget?

 

[BethelAssembly]

They might work, they might not. Without knowing how your going to use the space it's hard to judge. Are these just for color with other lights being used for white light? Are their cameras involved? Is there any kind of projection screen or any other video on the wall? What's the budget?

The budget is really not strict because we are very flexible as a church and just buy what we need but I think I want to keep it under about $7,000 if I can…

These lights specifically will be wash lights, this is also why I don’t know why the quote was given for fixtures that do RGBW, I didn’t understand that part. The ones from Pro Church Lights appear to just be white light.

There shouldn’t be cameras involved, this is going to be our youth area for Wednesday services.

The projections will all run through television screens, so the lights won’t mess with those right?

Sorry, I’m a high school student, and I’m literally the media director for the entire church going on 4 years and I have no technical training lol.

Thank you for your help!

 

[jglodeklights]

Personally- not overkill. Not actually necessarily the correct fixtures nor the correct placement from a basic photometric assessment. The angle of incidence from the front of the stage is going to be 29 degrees and upstage (back of the stage) it's down to 20 degrees. That's if the 17' height of the fixtures is from the stage deck, but I suspect it's not so it will likely be a flatter angle than that. I prefer my lights to be a little on the flatter side, but in this type of application where there needs to be interaction with the congregation I tend to go for about a 45 degree angle so it's not so obnoxious to the eyes of the people on the stage. The bigger issue is the spread of the light. With the most narrow being 23 beam/50 field each fixture will end up spreading over the entire width of the stage with a 9' diameter brighter spot in the middle. That's giant and doesn't provide you much control. Even using TVs for media you need to keep the lights from flaring on them otherwise you'll get reflections that can lower legibility. This will really be quite exacerbated if the angle of the light to the stage is too shallow. To be honest, I'm actually going back to a job where we represent Chauvet in specification sales and while I like their fixtures, I happen to think these ones are just not quite the correct ones for this application.

Ideally, the fixtures would want to be about 10' from the front of the stage, though you may want a second position further from the stage if you're doing anything in front of it. At that distance I'd still personally find the field diameter too large for my preferences as it's going to be about 13'- your spacing for an even wash is about 9' apart. As for specifics for what might be a better setup, like @techieman33 said there are other considerations that need to be taken into account. To add to his list of questions I'd also wonder how you plan to control them, and if you need some specific areas highlighted like a podium. I'm also wondering why there isn't at least one position (at 15' deep two would be better) for top light. If they are relying on the can lights for that purpose you're going to fight to get the balance between the two things right.

As for why RGBW? It's pretty standard these days to include RGBW even for worship unless you're keeping your services very classic and aren't using the space for anything else. I've worked on a number of HoW lighting renos and pretty much most except Catholic congregations want to have the option for color changing lest they decide to do something like a concert, musical, or speaker event in the space.

I honestly think it would be worthwhile to get another quote, or at least talk more clearly through with whomever specified this what their application plan is to make sure they aren't just throwing light at the stage without considering how it will actually work on the stage and for your purposes. Cookie cutter packages (this is what it looks like) rarely work out well in the long run.

 

[BethelAssembly]

Personally- not overkill. Not actually necessarily the correct fixtures nor the correct placement from a basic photometric assessment. The angle of incidence from the front of the stage is going to be 29 degrees and upstage (back of the stage) it's down to 20 degrees. That's if the 17' height of the fixtures is from the stage deck, but I suspect it's not so it will likely be a flatter angle than that. I prefer my lights to be a little on the flatter side, but in this type of application where there needs to be interaction with the congregation I tend to go for about a 45 degree angle so it's not so obnoxious to the eyes of the people on the stage. The bigger issue is the spread of the light. With the most narrow being 23 beam/50 field each fixture will end up spreading over the entire width of the stage with a 9' diameter brighter spot in the middle. That's giant and doesn't provide you much control. Even using TVs for media you need to keep the lights from flaring on them otherwise you'll get reflections that can lower legibility. This will really be quite exacerbated if the angle of the light to the stage is too shallow. To be honest, I'm actually going back to a job where we represent Chauvet in specification sales and while I like their fixtures, I happen to think these ones are just not quite the correct ones for this application.

Ideally, the fixtures would want to be about 10' from the front of the stage, though you may want a second position further from the stage if you're doing anything in front of it. At that distance I'd still personally find the field diameter too large for my preferences as it's going to be about 13'- your spacing for an even wash is about 9' apart. As for specifics for what might be a better setup, like @techieman33 said there are other considerations that need to be taken into account. To add to his list of questions I'd also wonder how you plan to control them, and if you need some specific areas highlighted like a podium. I'm also wondering why there isn't at least one position (at 15' deep two would be better) for top light. If they are relying on the can lights for that purpose you're going to fight to get the balance between the two things right.

As for why RGBW? It's pretty standard these days to include RGBW even for worship unless you're keeping your services very classic and aren't using the space for anything else. I've worked on a number of HoW lighting renos and pretty much most except Catholic congregations want to have the option for color changing lest they decide to do something like a concert, musical, or speaker event in the space.

I honestly think it would be worthwhile to get another quote, or at least talk more clearly through with whomever specified this what their application plan is to make sure they aren't just throwing light at the stage without considering how it will actually work on the stage and for your purposes. Cookie cutter packages (this is what it looks like) rarely work out well in the long run.

I had worried that the options they provided were “cookie cutter” and the prices were just ridiculous, I hate to even say the number here! We are no longer working under said company is the main problem, the quote was too much and it led leadership to tell me to get the hardware ourselves for the install.

A question that our youth pastor asked was if the lights can be mounted as close to the ceiling as possible, or, if they need to be descended from the ceiling to get a better angle on the subjects.

I don’t know if the picture is too blurry, but our network churches have all recommended this company. The specifications fly over my head, but do you think that these fixtures could work for our space? And if so which ones do y’all think would work better?

I’m in WAY over my head with lighting!!

I had planned on using a software based control method in case we needed to scale this setup at any time. It will probably be Chroma-Q (unless anyone has a better recommendation!!) at this point. The stage design will also be ran on DMX channels at the end of this chain.

 

[techieman33]

The lights can be mounted as close to the ceiling as you want. You could start at the ceiling and then if you find there are to many shadows showing up on faces then you could lower them down some later.

As far as the specs you posted I think those could work. Probably 3-4 of the 200w ones to wash the whole stage area. And then one of the 100w zoom ones for each area that you want to highlight. And with the barndoors on those fixtures you should at least have some beam shaping control to help keep light off of screens or other things that you may not want it on.

 

[BethelAssembly]

Is it ok to not have any points of emphasis? I am quite ok with certain points not being the center of attention over others.

 

[almorton]

Having a level even wash is perfectly fine, peeps spend a lot of time to get a very even wash. But sometimes it's useful to have "specials" for speakers, singers etc.

 

[BethelAssembly]

Having a level even wash is perfectly fine, peeps spend a lot of time to get a very even wash. But sometimes it's useful to have "specials" for speakers, singers etc.

Thank you, this helps a lot! Think I actually just settled my mind on what we are purchasing also!!

 

[techieman33]

Is it ok to not have any points of emphasis? I am quite ok with certain points not being the center of attention over others.

@almorton is right. There really are no hard and fast rules for lighting. So much of it depends on the specific space, how it's used, what the people using it like, etc. Things that are really hard to convey over the internet in a couple of paragraphs of text. So all we can do is try to give you some options to figure out what will work for you.