The three week CRAVE series at Riv.

We pulled down the black fabric from our previous set build and replaced it with eighth inch hardboard and pegboard. The pegboard has 1 mil translucent plastic behind it and we drilled out holes so the backlights would make the letters CRAVE visible. All the LED lights that were pointed up were reoriented to point down and toward the back wall so that the holes in the pegboard would effectively glow with color.

The most involved part of this was attaching all the sheets of hardboard and pegboard. We went through almost two full boxes of screws. Given the option I would have used 3/16 inch thick materials but that would’ve cost nearly twice as much, which is crazy.

Beginnings was a five week series at Riverview on the Old Testament, culminating with Easter services highlighting prophesies that point directly at Jesus.

The original design called for many trees/roots, then we talked about sunflowers, then a single tree, then saw Andrew Hunt’s Blue Ridge Origin set and decided we should ask to use the idea.

So, over the course of almost a week we constructed this set. There is a steel stud wall across the full length of the back wall (about 54 feet) with 3mil plastic and polymuslin cloth covering it. Attached to the back of the wall are 25 LED lights and the cross (also made from steel studs covered with plastic and material) is attached at the architectural truss and to the back of the wall.

The gray area and lettering is all projected on our white wall.

The ‘dirt pile’ is actually a structure of wood and chicken-wire with landscaping fabric covering it and 10 cubic feet of peat moss spread over the structure. The leaves are 1.5in Styrofoam that was cut with a jig-saw, painted and then holes were drilled in the ends to put bent PVC pipe into. The PVC was bent then spray-painted.

It may not sound like all that much but it was a long build.

Riverview series on a few of the names of God.

Forty CRT monitors attached to nineteen splitters, attached to seven old computers. Each computer is running the same 7 minute video on a delay of 45 seconds or so. The back wall projection is a static image that changes for each service segment and each song.

The lighting during the music is setup on a 30 second fade from color to color. There are a handful of little Chauvet LED lights behind the monitor structure.

The monitor stand was built level by level as we added each row of monitors.

Riverview’s “Declassified” series which ran in January.

Loosely based film noir look, cityscape gobos on lights pointed at the side and back walls of the auditorium, projected cityscape on the stage wall. One fixture with a G40 incandescent bulb hung from the architectural truss. A desk/typewriter/wire-fan/coat placed on the stage.

A Riverview series that ran November 2008…

Six upside-down inflatable globes hung from the auditorium ceiling using floral wire to accompany projection of an upside-down map of the earth on the back wall.

We had to reinflate a couple of the globes every week because they became droopy.

The ACME Anvil Co. series at Riverview is coming to a close so I thought it was about time I get the build information up…

The series “ACME Anvil Co.” is about weights, things that slow us down from going all out for Jesus.

What we did: The set is comprised of shipping crates made from disassembled pallets and some new materials. We were able to round up about 4 dozen pallets over a period of a month prior to the beginning of the series. Pallets are made to be structurally sound so taking them apart perhaps wasn’t the best idea but the alternative was spending a lot of money to get all-new materials.

There were tons of folks that got involved in this build and a handful of companies that donated materials. It has been great to have the help from people around Riverview grow as we continue to do more aggressive sets.

We put some 4×4 legs on the drum riser and ‘skirted’ it with pallet materials. One crate was hung stage right and a replica anvil was made and set on one of the crates. Kristie made two stencils that we used to spray the logo on the crates. Five additional crates were constructed for our other venue.

Tomorrow we’re transitioning to our new set for the next series.

Our first set in the new building expansion at Riverview, probably one of the most challenging and mind boggling sets we have ever done.

What we did: Where to start? I guess I’ll go chronologically… Kate and I put up the bubble-wrap on the back wall (yes, that is bubble-wrap) on Sunday afternoon following the last message of our previous series, Sketch. Monday we cut and painted the weird quadrilaterals with help from Kristie, Kate and Linda. Tuesday and Wednesday we got our lighting hung and Andy built the projection screen. A tip about hanging lighting: make sure you get two inch outside diameter pipe, not two inch inside diameter and really, it may not be a bad idea to take a clamp with you to double-check the size. The projection screen is a 2×4 frame with eighth inch underlay and a painted canvas drop-cloth mounted to the front.

Hanging everything was a huge challenge but we’re trying not to attach anything to the wall in the new building. What complicated the hanging issue was that everything had to be hung in a particular order because it is all different distances from the back wall. We’ve gotten some great positive feedback about this set and I think it set a higher standard for quality in our future designs.

The projected images and video are all masked so that they only appear on the hanging shapes and screen. Kristie and Noel handled that process so I don’t know how long it took but there are ongoing adjustments because of how the hanging shapes settle from week to week.

There are a few more pictures here.

We are currently working on logistics for our next two sets, one should be fairly scaled back and will be up for two weeks and another that is relatively involved which will run through October into the first part of November.