Shoestring Stage Design - Part 2

2. Projection is your friend.

Something that is coming up into church production is projection. If you’ve got the equipment to do some cool projection in your environments you have an inexpensive way to add some engaging worship elements. Of course the cost here is time in producing unique elements but you’re able to taylor each piece custom to your need. There is a whole new market of creatives that have begun to open themselves up to the church world. Worship VJ, video jockey - yes this is a throw back term to radio days...a disk jockey. This person is one who creates visual worship environments using projection in a space.

"The visual image is a kind of tripwire for the emotions."
Diane Ackerman

One growing form of this is environmental projection. Taking projectors outside of the confines of the screen and projecting on walls, sides of buildings, on people, across platforms, etc. A couple of people who are doing this well are Cameron Ware check out his blog on visual worship at http://visualworshiper.com/blog/ or Greg Dolezal & Stephen Proctor over at http://worshipvj.com

VJ (short for) :: Video Jockey (meaning) :: One who creatively captures and effectively communicates a specific message using a wide range still and moving imagery.

If you’re worried about creating a variation of staging elements, cost of materials or lack of creativity on the stage, but you’re knocking it out of the park on the video elements why not consider taking your strong point fully into the room. Imagery can help engage and enhance worship, and it is also a good idea to have the input of your worship leader/pastor. You don’t want to do something that detracts from the spirit of the song or moment. At the same time you may run into some pastors who are either not entirely creative or what you are trying to accomplish goes over their heads. In that case take care not to offend, but also take care to mold and shape their suggestions into something they can own during the set. I have found myself sitting during many worship sets across quite a few different churches where I scratch my head at the background selection. I don’t think that was the intended reception for it, but that is certainly what came across.

This is something you can chance regularly without much effort or expense so get creative with how you project and what you’re projecting. http://www.renewedvision.com/ has a couple pieces of worship software for the mac that has many different applications for the worship environment including a way to split images across multiple screens. I am by far no expert in this area, but am continuing to explore new ways to engage the worshipers in new ways.

"Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organizing and manipulating of words and pictures."
Jeffery Veen

to come...

• LIGHTS, action, camo.
• Where do I find materials???
• I need inspiration, HELP!
• We’re a church not a night club.

Shoestring Stage Design - Part 1

-designing creative worship environments on a tight budget

I work for a youth ministry doing technical production and don’t always get the largest budget with which to be creative. I have to justify for every penny I spend because sometimes, the ideas I have are a little more harebrained than one might normally come up with. The designs have to be more engaging than it would be for an older demographic because kids are bombarded with incredulous stage designs and production values. You can’t one up music videos, MTV or VH1 music award shows, Miss America pageants, Good Morning America or American Idol. Thankfully you don’t have to. No one expects anything from the church which is a good thing...and an incredibly sad one. So the only limitations you have are set by yourself and whoever governs your stage design. Once you set a certain level of design you’re going to have to keep it up in one way or another.

The best way I can tell you to keep up your level of design, is surround yourself with creative people, resources, and when you buy materials buy multipurpose. Design stuff with a future use in mind because one day instead of going out to buy a gaggle of one thing or another you’ll already have something you can either use in lieu of, or along the same lines of what you’re initially thinking. Also if it’s a disposable material...try and get as many uses out of it as possible. Either incorporate it into your next design to keep costs down, or use it soon after. These are some ways to keep an air of consistency throughout your designs.

In these next couple of blogs I’ll talk about my design process and how to create some cool stuff with what you have and a little help from home depot.

1. Substance abuse or looking good?

The age old question, form (looking good) over function, or do you design for the series topic (the substance)? This is the first thing that I start throwing against the wall like cooked spaghetti and if it sticks I go with it. This is all dependent on what you’re asked for. Sometimes you can come up with some incredibly creative elements that fit your theme, and other times you can’t touch it with a ten foot pole. If you’ve got a series on relationships, there is a plethora of material you could use that would be either inexpensive, edgy or laying around your house that you could use to knock it home visually to your audience. If you’re allowed, a bed in the center of your stage could give a bit of the forbidden allure to the topic at hand. I’m pretty sure everybody has a spare bed somewhere in the church that you could manage to wrangle up there. One church in Ohio built a large heart-shaped bed in the center of their stage. Whimsical, edgy and communicative. What I decided to do was create four foot 3D hearts out of corrugated plastic, some lumber and our existing LED lighting fixtures which gave me any amount of color options I wanted on stage. A 4ft x 8ft sheet of this plastic was $10, it took two per heart and I created two. Lumber add another $25. So i created unique staging elements with a theme for around $70.

I’ve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration. Good design is problem solving.

— Jeffrey Veen

Not everything has to be with a theme though. Sometimes your creative layout can be with the way you stage your band, use your existing lighting, and maybe a few other pieces just to create a nice visual look. Ikea paper lanterns and bulb strands are an incredibly cheap, reusable and warm creative resource to give a homey, ‘cool’ look to your stage. You can vary your look too with different sized paper lanterns, and what I found is if you’ve got LED par cans just use the frame holder in the can, slip the paper lantern ring into it and viola you have a color changing paper lantern you can hang anywhere on your stage. I used these to create a homey ambience on the stage, but not necessarily adhering to a particular themed look.

Sit down with your team and decide if there is a particular creative element that will drive your series. It may be something small to accent your entire design that will make people stop and go wow. Sometimes even your theme or series can be lacking in the creative flow. This is a good time for you to make magic happen. Boost the creativity of the group by coming up with some crazy awesome stuff looks wise. Sure the theme may be lacking in creativity but that doesn’t mean you have to. 


to come...

• Projection is your friend.
• LIGHTS, action, camo.
• Where do I find materials???
• I need inspiration, HELP!
• My name is what?

you fail, I fail, we all fail. hooray.

Alright I suppose that is a little depressing.

But it is entirely true. I sit around the youth office and we have discussions about Christian media and how much it makes Jesus cringe. So I'll just go down the list of what makes Jesus cry.

Christian Media
Christian Music
The Church
The World
You
I

sooo everything?

Most of this is the ME factor.

We are selfish and cannot see beyond our own goals, dreams or accomplishments.

Isaiah 2:22 Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he?

This is not a natural phenomena, nor is it a recent one.
This thing called, sin (what is sin? sin is anything that is not a part of, or perfect or righteous in God) it came in and separated man from God, it put us on the outside looking in so to speak. It introduced a selfish agenda into our nature instead of a God centered agenda.
It's not recent either. Go back in time and you find examples of biblical proportions of selfish ambition and vain conceit (Philipplians 2:3). Moses, out of selfishness beat the rock to get water out of it when he was told to just speak of it. Adam and Eve wanted to be "like god" and ate the fruit.

To dig down under the surface we see most of these huge moral failings happen when man begins to rely upon either another human or themselves for strength and understanding. It happens to everyone in some way, shape or form (1 Corinthians 10:13). There are also right and wrong ways to deal with it.

The sooner we start realizing that everyone is at fault and begin relying on God and not man the sooner we can rectify the situation and begin NOT grieving God in all of the trivial things. I'm not there yet either. I grieve God daily.

Ephesians 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.