The Cross

Death Let Go. Jesus Won’t.

The cross. This is the single point in history upon which our faith rests. The fact that Jesus sacrificed Himself and conquered death is what gives us hope and purpose.

This year at Riv, Easter was a standalone service, so there was no need for our set design to fit into a larger series. As such, we decided to construct a single cross to stand prominently in the center of the stage.

The body of the cross is built out of raw wood in which we drilled holes to wire marquee style lights. For our Holt, REO Town, and MSU Venues, we built crosses at 12, 8, and 6 feet respectively. They were held together with pocket screws and mounted on plates of either MDF or metal. The lights are dim-able via DMX controller. On the whole we kept the lights fairly soft, but introduced a few soft pulses and swells intensionally during the service.

For our Westside Venue, we repurposed the cross that was hanging in the sanctuary of the church that previously owned the building. When remodeling the auditorium in the summer of 2015, we intentionally saved the cross so as to reuse it for this purpose, nodding back to the history and legacy of the previous church.

For the full photo set click here.

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Joy Happens

Philippians. It’s a book full of contradiction. Paul is in prison yet is writing of joy, contentment, and gladness over and over again. For this set we wanted to have this contradiction play out on stage in a visual way.

The main contrast in this design comes from an order and chaos juxtaposition. We took more of the leftover 2x4s from our Credo set, painted them gray, and used them as our component element for the build. (These 2x4s will have a total of 28 weeks of use after this series wraps – a key feature of making our set design budget stretch further over the course of a year.)

For the full photo set click here.

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The chaos in the center of the stage was a unique challenge to tackle. It needed to look organic and fragile, yet able to hold itself up without visible supports. One of our builders happened to have 4″ construction screws with him at the time which proved most helpful in solving this challenge.

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Holt Venue

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REO Town Venue

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Westside Venue

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The projection motif for this set is very vibrant and bold, a representation of Paul’s joy and a stark contrast to the struggles he’s going through. We have the text “Joy Happens” in bold letters on the back walls of all our venues as a constant reminder that in all of life’s circumstances, we ought to choose a life of joy.

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Emmanuel

For our Christmas series this year, we decided to go with a wintry/Christmasy set rather than literal set tying to the topics being taught.

We wanted to maintain the Christmas feel with this set while also pushing the visual concept of a Christmas tree. On the stage we have two variations of a geometric tree. The first is a freestanding tree made from two flat plains intersecting to give it dimensionality. The second is simply the outline of half a tree on the back wall.

From the Credo set we had many, many extra 2x4s backstage so we repurposed them as the bases for the freestanding trees. Each piece had a trough cut down the middle as well as a cutout for the second 2×4 for fit into. The wooden sheets then slid into each 2×4 and were stapled together along the seam.

For the full photo set click here.

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For variety on the stage we made three sizes of the trees. Each template was traced with a projector and then used as the pattern for cutting the rest. All-in-all we build seven large trees, five mediums, and 18 smalls.

The outline on the wall is made from sheets of plywood sliced into eight inch boards and stapled to the wall. It was hit with a soft yellow wash with the projection to highlight the wood grain in contrast to the background imagery.

Holt Venue

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MSU Venue

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REO Town Venue

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Westside Venue

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Credo

What we believe matters. What we believe about God matters most.

With the launch of Riv’s fourth venue, we decided it was high time to build up our Set Design Team to include more than just the usual three guys. We put out an ask for volunteers to join the team and the response was great!

With this series being our big fall launch, we wanted to really up our game in the scale of this set. The series is titled Credo and looks at Riv’s mission statement, vision statement, and core beliefs. A number of our recent sets have been very metallic in structure and organic in form, so we decided to push this in the opposite direction – wooden and geometric. This provided the opportunity to go with a very architectural motif which ties to the fact that this series’ content is foundational to the Christian faith.

The decision to go with triangles versus squares was for a few reasons. First is the shape being a reference to the triune nature of God, as He forms the basis for all our beliefs. Secondly the triangle is the strongest of shapes, and the statements expressed in our mission are what we really stand upon as a church. The Gospel is both simple and incredibly complex. A triangle is a simple shape, yet we’ve layered it and replicated it in a complex structure. From any angle that you look at the stage you’ll see different nuances of the set.

Below you’ll see photos of the full process of planning, building, and assembling this set across our venues.

For the full photo set click here.

 

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Roughly 350 2x4s were used for this set. And 3000 individual cuts were made. Each 2×4 was cut in half and then cut into a point at 60º angles to meet together in a perfect hexagon.

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Ten people contributed to the building of this set totaling 160 hours of work.

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For the assembly of all four sets we used 1000 staples and 3/4 gallon of wood glue.

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The table was custom built for this series to be on stage at the Holt Venue. It matches the 60º cuts that are used across the entire set,  just on a smaller scale. To prevent the table from tipping, the whole piece is mounted to a 40 pound baseplate (can’t have Noel’s coffee spilling during the service).

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Each set has LED strip lights mounted to the backside of the first and third layers of the structure. This allows us to illuminate both the internal structure and the back wall to correspond with the stage lights that change throughout the service.

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Holt Venue

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REO Town Venue

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MSU Venue

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Westside Venue

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One piece of set design that provides an added challenge is building each set so that it matches nicely with the image that is projected on the screen at our video venues. Below is the Westside Venue’s screen raised during the message.

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2nd Service at REO

If you have not yet heard the news, we’re excited to announce that we’re adding a 2nd service at REO! After many weeks of overflowing capacity, we’re excited to open up additional space to reach more people in REO town with this 2nd service.

Starting on February 8th our new service times will be 9:30ish and 11:30ish.

For all production volunteers this now means a call time of 8:30am, and prayer/production meeting at 9am.  We ask that you commit to both services, so plan on serving from 8:30am to 1pm-ish on Sundays.  Please adjust your calendars accordingly!

Thank you all for your service in helping the gospel go forward in Lansing!

REO Venue Launch

This has been an exciting year at Riv with the opening of our 3rd location in the Lansing area. After a few delays getting approval to purchase the old Cadillac club, we were able to jump into the remodel right at the beginning of 2014. We knew from the start we were going to have to get a little creative with the design of the space because of the limited trim height in the room. We also wanted to provide a way to connect with the teaching via video that felt natural in a smaller space. The ability to accommodate our largest bands at Riv and provide quality sound for worship was also important. This lead in some new directions that we hadn’t taken with our other venues in the past.

First the space was drawn up in sketchup to provide a 3D model of what it would look like when finished.

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Next we planned out the lighting, video, and audio rigging relaying mostly on a 2″ pipe grid. This was done to accommodate flexibility in set design, stage lighting, and keeping the fixtures as close to the finished ceiling as possible.

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After the rigging was planned, we could mock up a basic lighting plot.

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Once we had the rigging and electrical figured out, it was on to plotting out all the cabling.

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And the equipment racks.

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Then it was finally time to start putting it all together. We had to wait for the new stage and walls to be framed in.

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Once everything was framed and the drywall was up, it was time to start assembling the pipe grid.

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Followed by pulling a few miles of cable throughout the building and into the equipment racks.

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And finally connecting up all the equipment.

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The last piece came together 2 days before opening.

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The finished venue looked and sounded great for opening on Easter 2014.

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And now people can worship and hear the Gospel every week in REO Town!

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Thanks to everyone who helped with the construction, cable pulling, termination, and assembly of equipment! Easter was a huge success, we had 810 people attend REO for our opening weekend. We never could have made our opening date without all your help!

Sola13

After almost a year of planning Sola13 finally came together. I’m so thankful for everyone that put in the long hours and gave up their weekend to help make this conference a reality. It was by far the largest conference we’ve done to date. Here’s some of the stats for Sola13.

11 months of planning
3 truck loads of gear
28 rigging points
120 man hours of setup
15 person live production crew
3000 in attendance
1100 watched live online
People in 47 states and 24 countries joined the simulcast

Here’s a little glimpse of how the conference came together. It all started with a 3D rendering and some stage plots drawn up in illustrator.

The stage, audio, lighting, and video was drawn in google sketchup.

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Having a full 3D model allowed us to see every aspect of the setup.

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Stage plot documents were also made in illustrator for fast setup of the band.

Sola13 Stage Plot

A lighting plot was also drawn in illustrator for the hanging of lighting fixtures, addressing, and lighting focus.

Sola13 Lighting Plot

From these documents, LiveSpace and our crew got started around 3:30pm to setup the night before.

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It took awhile to get all the rigging in place, but once we did things started coming together.

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Once everything was hanging, it was just time to get it all plugged in and everything trimmed to the correct height.

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With everything all in place, we left around 3am to get some sleep before rehearsal in the morning.

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The conference kicked off Friday afternoon with Noel, everything was finally working wonderfully.

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We had a great turnout for the first session, and the conference only grew over the weekend.

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It was encouraging to see how many people engaged in the teaching over the course of the two days.

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And the band did a phenomenal job leading everyone in worship.

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All in all Sola13 was a huge success!

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Many thanks again to all of you who volunteered to make Sola13 happen, and the crew from LiveSpace for going the extra mile!

In The Beginning

Trying something new out, we made a video for our set build for Fall 2013:

Genesis Set Sneak Peek

A little sneak peek of what our set design guys are working on for the Genesis series starting September 7th.

Genesis Sneak Peek

(thanks to Captain J for the photo)