Projector Animations

Wireframe-OE-(0;00;00;00)For Not So Silent Night this year we played around with using a projector as a light source.  We took a 17,000 lumen projector, put it upstage center, and faced it towards the audience.  With the room hazed out we were able to create some pretty sweet animations.  Stuff you just can’t do with a normal moving light.

We used Qlab since it is a very reliable media player and the new version adds a lot of on the fly controls for manipulating content.  It’s also controllable from a variety of ways, MIDI notes, keyboard shortcuts, MIDI Show Control, iPad app, lots of options.  This made it easy to add into our Ableton show control rig.

We loaded up some content into Qlab and tried full color, complex stuff along with black and white, really simple stuff.  We started to find that the simpler the better since we’re trying to discern images in mid-air using haze.  The more negative space in the image, the easier it was to read.

Think of your moving lights.  The gobos that give the most distinct beams are typically the least busy ones.  The really busy gobos may look good on the ground or wall as a texture but probably don’t look as good in the air through haze generally speaking.  Instead of individual beams you can end up with a frosted look.

Not that all colored content look bad, color bars through the air actually looked really cool, ha ha.  I was really interested in beams for this show so white graphics with a black background seemed to work best.  This gave us the most contrast possible for the beams to cut through.

White is also easy to color correct into other colors.  Take away green and you’re left with magenta for example.  Taking away a color from white to change the look is way easier than creating content in a specific color and then trying to get white instead.

After seeing what worked and what we liked I created some simple stuff in After Effects.  Things rendered nice and fast since they were so simple.  Creating everything ourselves also gave us full control over the look.  Searching through stock content is sometimes more work than just creating stuff yourself if you know what you want.

Below is what we made.  I’m pretty sure we didn’t use everything but we wanted lots of options.  Feel free to rip them from YouTube and play around with a projector you may have lying around.  You don’t need 17,000 lumens (but it helps, ha ha) you can try it out with a smaller projector just to see the effect.

I think that my favorite effect was the small dots falling.  This created an awesome starry, twinkly, kinda look.  We actually used it on a song where it was the only light in the whole room and it was great.

The moving line was probably my second favorite.  Real laser like effect waving around.  The OE logos came out nice too.  Always cool when you can incorporate a little branding into the effects.

Audio Dots
Audio Lines
Circle Dots 1
Circle Dots 2
Line
OE Wall
Lines
Moving Line
Snow 2
Snow 1
Snowy Dots
Squiggles

Video From Not So Silent Night 2013

OESlogoJust a short video showing one of the songs from Not So Silent Night.  Between the kids jumping around and the lights going crazy it was a fun song!

In some parts you can see a little bit of the projector that we put upstage shooting towards the audience.  This gave us some really cool motions kinda like a laser.  It gets washed out at some points in the video but you’ll see it.  Content was simply white motion graphics on a black background, really easy to make.

Quick Christmas Arena Update 2013

Well, it’s been a crazy week!  Lots of long hours but the service went well and lots of people came forward to receive Jesus!  I’ll post more details later but here are a couple of pictures from the night.

In looking at the pictures I went back to my rendering in Light Converse and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the render and reality were very similar.  I added one render from Light Converse with a wide angle type view like the GoPro shots for comparison, pretty cool!

Christmas Arena Outreach 2013

2013-12-15 13.26.45This year our big Christmas outreach is at the BB&T Center which is the home of the Florida Panthers NHL Team.  With 17,500 seats we hope to have a full house to celebrate Jesus’ birth together!  The arena is also a great outreach for those people that don’t want to go to a church but will go to an arena.

We had the last of our rehearsals on campus.  Lots of prep work and planning out details.  It takes a small army to make an event like this happen and go well!

Load in is tomorrow at 7am.  The arena is covering the ice now and setting the stage up.  Once again Special Event Services is helping us out with all lighting, projection, and audio for the event.  I’ll post more info as things progress.

Not So Silent Night 2013

2013-12-14 21.33.01It’s that time of the year!  2013 is ending with a bang here at Calvary.  Lots of big events leading up to Christmas!

One of these December events is Oceans Edge School of Worship’s Not So Silent Night.  This is their annual Christmas concert and it’s the first big concert of the school year.  It’s the students time to apply what they have learned so far and push themselves.

For us on staff it’s a chance to try and do some new and cool things on the tech side.  We pretty much get free reign with all the toys we have at our disposal, ha ha.  This year I got to try something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time, using a projector as a moving light.

We happened to have a spare projector that’s pretty bright, 17,000 lumens!  We positioned this upstage and shot it forward over the stage and over most of the audience.  With lots of haze in the air the results were some pretty awesome beams that were very laser like if we wanted that effect.

Since it was a projector (and not a gobo in a light) we could put out any content we wanted.  Anything white on a black background looked like nice sharp beams cutting through the air.  The results were really cool and couldn’t be done with a moving light or even a laser.  It also allowed us to project words that were actually readable in the air which was really cool.

The projector provided some very high tech kinda looks.  To contrast that we used a lot more conventionals than we normally do.  We had a flown row and a ground based row of pars which we used as audience blinders.  We also had 10 lekos with gobos spread throughout the room to put out some nice, warm, beams.

Between the usual intelligents we have, the projector, and all the additional conventional lights we had lots of options.  I like to try and create variety to keep things from getting repetitive.  Even if something is only used on one song I think it’s worth the effort.

We also had fun with other effects.  Lots of haze (of course), plus low lying fog from a pair of Martin Glaciators, and confetti cannons.  Our rigging system had a lot of cues, bringing lights up and down for different looks.  Plus some different flown backdrop elements that the students created which flew in and out.

Another cool element was some “screens” made out of recycled pallet wood.  This gave a stylized look to all of the projections.  Not everything looked great on it with the texture but once we found the right content it was a cool look.  We purposely left some gaps between the panels so that a light could be put behind the screens and shine through.  this create beams through the cracks and gave us more options.

Once again we made Ableton Live our master control for all click, loop, ProPresenter lyrics, lighting, and projection.  One machine ran Ableton, another ran the two side screens with ProPresenter, a third computer ran Qlab for the stage projection that faced the audience, lastly out ETC Ion controlled lights.

A combination of MIDI notes and MIDI show control was used for all of these commands.  Some devices were hardwired and some were sent commands over our WiFi network using Apple’s built in MIDI over Ethernet.  An iPad with Qlab’s remote app was our backup control for the projector on stage.  Everything worked great!

This seems like a lot of extra work but in the end it’s actually less work.  Start one machine and several follow in perfect harmony.  It also let us hit cues that just aren’t practical when everything is human controlled.  We had lots of hits on specific notes that were hit perfectly every time with this system.

We had two sold out nights in our theatre and it was a lot of work but a lot of fun.  Now it’s time to get ready for our main Christmas outreach service in the BB&T center!  Load in starts tomorrow, I’ll be sure and post some info on that as well!

Check out Oceans Edge’s Instagram for some more pictures.  I’ll post some more pictures and videos as soon as I can.