TNDV managed all elements including video, audio, lighting, staging and crews for the 22-camera production, which spanned four locations spread across two floors of the Music City Centre in Nashville.
Combining leadership meetings, elections and educational sessions with worship services, musical performances and special events, the biennial General Assembly is a crucial gathering for the Church of God, shaping the direction and future activities of the church and its followers. Held over four days, GA16 was Nashville's first hosting of the event, and the first time it encompassed multiple environments. Daytime meetings and sessions were held in the centre's massive, fourth-floor Grand Ballroom, while a worship space built across two of the facility's downstairs exhibit halls seated over 20,000 attendees in the evenings.
"The separate locations required very distinct atmospheres," said Chad Gurney, coordinator of media for Church of God. "TNDV designed the worship experience to be immersive and entertaining, energizing participants after the more formal tone of the meetings and sessions upstairs."
The stage design for the worship space posed one of the project's first challenges, with the exhibit halls' large supporting columns threatening to significantly impede visibility. TNDV came up with a creative 'services in the round' design that put the column in the center of the stage and wrapped it in LED displays showing motion graphics, image magnification and video playback, avoiding visual obstruction while turning the column into an engaging production element.
In addition to the two primary venues, GA16 also featured anchor-desk style sets on each floor for interviews with leaders, attendees and sponsors. All four locations were connected to and controlled from TNDV's 53ft, double-expando Exclamation truck, which was parked inside the facility, backstage of the worship area.
"Exclamation was ideal for GA16's requirements and scale," explained TNDV President and Owner Nic Dugger. "Rather than sending two separate trucks, we saved the Church of God money by using a single production control space in the building. And even when late schedule changes required us to produce shows in both main areas simultaneously, the technical capacity, capabilities and sheer size of Exclamation allowed us to do that easily."
"GA16 was the largest production endeavour for the Church of God in their more than 100-year history, and we were honoured that they placed their trust in us to realize their vision for the event," concluded Dugger. "This is a great example of what a client-vendor relationship should be, working hand-in-hand as a team to meet their objectives. We're proud that the results met both their goals and their budget, and look forward to the opportunity to working with them again."
(Jim Evans)
