Willow Creek hosted the FILO conference recently and I had the opportunity to share some of our lighting learnings from the Global Leadership Summit 2017. What you are about to read is what I wrote to present from at FILO. This is by no means an article full of specifications, power draw, or DMX channels, […]
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Designing With Scenic LED Pixels
When Jordan Monson joined Willow Creek South Barrington’s staff as Lighting Engineer, our LED game grew significantly stronger. Jordan came from designing, building and programming light suits for the dance company iLuminate, and over 6 years experience working with various forms of LEDs and alternative lighting products. In this article, Jordan outlines his workflow, process, […]
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Preparing for a Lighting Load In
A part of my role here at Willow is designing and installing many large lighting rigs every year. With large-scale production like at Willow, lighting rigs can get very complicated very fast. In order to minimize unnecessary complications and maximize efficiency, I have developed a process to help prepare for and lead lighting load-ins for large […]
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Rigging Made Easy: Crimping Tools and Swages by Glenn Davis
The way I see it the stage world just looks better when you have more options toward supporting or flying scenery. At Willow Creek Church, suspending scenery is very common. At times, we may create over 100- 32’x 1/16” cable drops to suspend a certain weekend look that weighs a few thousand pounds. Even though […]
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Rigging Made Easy: Cable and Glider by Glenn Davis
I’ve been hearing a lot lately from individuals who are working hard at scenic creativity that are disappointed there is very little information toward tips on rigging and rigging hardware. Almost every scenic project requires the suspension of some sort of scenic element that echoes back scary and dangerous. Which leads me to the question […]
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Safety Toward Rigging by Glenn Davis
I read an article recently that said, “Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly all accidents involving fallen objects.” Even though, that is a pretty humorous statement, the fact is it takes a lot of overwhelming work to overcome gravity. When it comes to rigging “probably” or “maybe” safe, is not the most reassuring words […]
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Conquer your Production and Programming Challenges
It is an extremely large undertaking and responsibility toward making the right decisions in creating an incredible Christ transformational, life changing moment for anyone who attends weekend services, outreaches and events. This requires an enormous amount of coordination from our production and programing departments with lots of orchestrating behind the scenes toward preparation and planning. […]
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Christmas Stage/Turntable Project
Each year at Christmas we create a memorable out reach that draws approximately 70,000 individuals from our surrounding communities. Needless to say, it’s an extremely large undertaking and responsibility on making decisions toward the scenic support. The month of September is noted for one thing with production and programming staff at Willow, final decisions need […]
Continue readingMore TagVisual art is a very powerful form of communication.
The growing awareness of churches toward using visual art such as scenic elements has opened the doors for opportunity for impacting individuals. From the standpoint of using scenic elements, the delusion is, we never think of the impact a few sticks of wood and a few gallons of paint has on inspiring someone’s life. There […]
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