Main Light Industries, Inc. in Wilmington, Delaware supplied Elevation Church with 35 B-EYEs for the Easter worship experiences, five for its primary broadcast location and 30 shared among nine other satellite locations.
"We place great importance on excellence in production," says Andy Bentley, lighting designer for Elevation Church and one of the technical directors. "Three of our locations are permanent facilities with AV and lighting gear installed. The other seven have portable rigs that are set up and torn down every Sunday."
The Easter worship experience featured seven different elements: four worship songs, an opener, a closer and sermon, each of which were programmed to have a different look. Bentley and a team of
Elevation volunteers mounted the B-EYEs on the upstage truss; in addition, nine Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE 1500s were positioned on the deck upstage.
"The B-EYEs had the same, consistent look at every campus," says Bentley. "I programmed everything a week before Easter at our broadcast location, then used that as a template for everything else which helped reduce the amount of programming time at the other locations."
The versatile B-EYEs quickly became his "favourite fixture," he reports. "They were incredible. We used the ability to control the color of every LED to get some really interesting colour palettes, including a patterned, stained-glass look that played off the theme of the sermon."
Bentley also used the beam shaper to "create some really great, big looks with just a few fixtures." He particularly liked "the ability of the beam shaper to animate, creating a very angelic, wing-flapping look, which we used in one of our worship songs," he says.
The wash functions of the B-EYEs also came in handy. "The wash creates an awesome color and, compared to other fixtures I've seen, the evenness of the wash is the best," he notes.
Bentley also praised the performance of the Alpha Spot HPE 1500. "They were great, and I plan on using them again in the near future."
Francesco Romagnoli, Clay Paky area manager for North and Latin America, commented, "It's great to see our B-EYEs used in so many markets and I'm pleased that Elevation Church was able to get such a great bang from them for their Easter worship."
(Jim Evans)
