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A Virtual Christmas Eve
When the enormous Fellowship Church wanted to deliver a really big Christmas Eve service, they turned to Portal Design Services to help make it happen.
Fellowship Church, in Dallas, is attended by over 18,000 people each weekend and, understandably, Christmas is one of their busiest times of the year. In order to produce a spectacular and powerful Christmas Eve service the church hired the nearby American Airlines Center for three days. Fellowship Church is well known for its high production values and slick presentation; however, with only two days on-site to prepare for their biggest show of the year, a little extra help was required.
Fellowship Church’s own production manager, Mike Walker, in coordination with lighting designer C. Andrew Dunning, of Landru Design, decided to call in Portal Design Services. Portal’s Jordan Ray took a portable WYSIWYG system to the Fellowship Church itself to allow Dunning and programmer / assistant-designer Daniel Page to pre-program in the comfort of the main church building.
“We placed the WYSIWYG system in a classroom at the church while rehearsals were taking place on the main worship center stage,” remarks Ray. “This enabled the other members of the church’s production team to be able to look and comment on the lighting for the Christmas Eve show. It also meant that Andrew did not miss any of the important interaction with other members of the production staff by his being off -site.”
The automated lighting rig of 54 High End Systems X-Spot Xtreme fixtures, 10 Studio Beams, 30 Studio Colors, 28 ColorPro HXs and 12 Martin MAC 2000 wash fixtures was augmented by over 200 conventional fixtures. All the lighting equipment for the event was supplied by Huntsville, Alabama-based Theatrical Lighting Systems (T.L.S.).
“We could have done this show without Portal,” commented Dunning. “But I hate to think what it would have looked like and how stressed we would have all been. By taking the time to pre-program, we were able to concentrate on making the show look perfect when we arrived on-site, rather than spending all our time creating ‘make-do’ cues. Anything that can make your life easier on-site is okay by me. That is what Portal does, and they do it very well.”
10th February 2005
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