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Axia Concepts Installs New Lighting for Inspire Church Pt 2

Show 162, Part 2

SVC Podcast – Show Notes – Show 162-2

In this edition of the SVC Podcast, SVC Contributing Editor Bennett Liles continues his conversation with Bryan Cole of Axia Concepts in San Jose, California about the lighting system upgrade project done for Hawaii’s Inspire Church. Bryan talks about the installation process, the power considerations and the training provided for the church crew in operating the new lighting system.

 For Part 1

Links of interest:

Download Podcast Here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/nb-svc/public/public/162-2_Inspire_Church_Bryan…

From Sound & Video Contractor Magazine, this is the SVC Podcast with Bryan Cole of Axia Concepts. Show notes and equipment links for the podcast are on the web site of Sound & Video Contractor Magazine at svconline.com.

When a church wants to reinforce and empower its message, lighting can be the key. Recently, Hawaii’s Inspire Church called in Bryan Cole of Axia Concepts to upgrade the lighting with a new LED system from elektraLite. The project turned on the power of atmosphere. Bryan is back to finish the story on how he lit up the stage at Inspire Church. That’s up next on the SVC Podcast.

Bryan, good to have you back with us for the SVC Podcast Part 2 from Axia Concepts in San Jose, California and you like to do church lighting.

I do.

And it looks like you did a great job on this. The Inspire Church in Hawaii. I would think that just the trip down there to do it would have been fun enough.

I don’t quite get the time to enjoy it when I’m there, but the people are wonderful and that’s what I really enjoy doing. As much of the creative elements of this church came from within the church body itself. So I merely just facilitated and gave them the tools to do what their artistry was already all about. [Timestamp: 1:25]

And they were dead set on having better lighting for all their events; not just the Sunday sermons but a lot of different things they have going on every week. It’s a very modern, live-music church so they’ve got a lot of different ways to use the lights. We talked last week about the elektraLite 1018-AIs and the ML-602 moving profile spots along with the LOS-1 Lightstream Quads. What else do you have in that lighting system now?

The only other thing we’ve provided, again we keep it simple, is we use the elektraLite eyeball, the 5-in-1 which means 5 LED’s; red, green, blue, white and I believe indigo. There’s a few of those hanging from the lighting truss, but more than anything those are just used, for example, inside the drum enclosure, sitting on the stage, just balancing on that. They have a two-part yoke mount so you can really easily just sit them on the stage and aim them up at a musician and provide side light, things like that. They’ve probably got about 20 of those that they pepper around and they move them quite a bit. So they do like to change the setting of the stage every, you know, maybe three months or so they’ll move them around. [Timestamp: 2:30]

Well, that certainly gives them the flexibility to do that without a lot of professional assistance.

Correct.

So how do they control all of this? Where’s the lighting control point?

Well, they have a media booth out in towards the back of the sanctuary as many churches have where they combine sound, video and lighting all into one place. They have an Avolites Tiger Touch II console which they’ve had for about a year now and they absolutely love it. [Timestamp: 2:54]

And they can power up all of these things and control the movers from there?

Correct. It’s all from a single point.

And how did you get power to all these new instruments? Did you have to do anything, let’s say, heroic on the power to get it run everywhere the new system needs it?

Well actually they had a pretty solid incandescent lighting infrastructure in place already where they had Edison jacks up in the ceiling at various places and dimmer channels marked and all that. So they had an infrastructure that worked well for incandescent lighting. Well when you go to LED of course that changes the game consistently. LED lights are intelligent fixtures and they require full power all the time plus a data signal. And so – but thankfully you have the ability to configure these dimmer racks to really just be on and off channels. So you’re not trying to dim the channel anymore you just want to turn the power on and off. And it kind of makes an inexpensive way to use the existing infrastructure if it’s still in good shape to then turn the lighting – all the intelligent fixtures off at the end of the service and save wear and tear on the power supplies and the fans and such like that. So we actually just used what was there. We have a future phase that’s coming up where we’ll be replacing the power control system with a Lyntec relay panel. [Timestamp: 4:07]

Well, I know it was a lot of fun just figuring out all the possibilities after getting all this stuff in but the really fun thing must have been once you got it in and showed it to the congregation and the tech crew. What was their reaction when you did the demo on this new lighting setup?

Thankfully they were really pleased. But the most fun for me in those situations is that I mentioned earlier. I like to provide technical infrastructures that allow the artists that exist in the organization to do their thing. They have folks there that design lighting cues better than I would ever be able to but they can’t design the lighting system to drive it. So when I was able to give them the tools and they were able to take their artistry to the next level that was the most fulfilling part for me. [Timestamp: 4:45]

And that seems to have been such a hit that they decided to install some of these in one of the church’s other locations.

Yes. They have another location and it’s a smaller location so any time something goes bigger on the big stage they will tend to move things down to this other stage that maybe don’t fit the design they’re trying to fit on the large stage. And they’re a recipient of many of these fixtures now. [Timestamp: 5:10]

Yeah, since you have the bigger church and they introduce something new the other locations can get, I don’t know if you want to say ‘hand-me-downs’ but they have new things coming down from the bigger church as they modernize.

Exactly.

They’re not just putting it in a closet somewhere but they’re getting maximum use out of it.

It’s a smaller stage so it ends up not being really a hand-me-down. It’s still an upgrade, it just works better on a smaller stage. [Timestamp: 5:32]

How long did all of this take to get everything installed and tested and ready to go for them to do what they can with it?

It was actually pretty quick. We prefer that the church have Unistrut instead of traditional pipe lighting bar and this church had, based on our recommendations, built a Unistrut grid at some point in the past. And then the Light Source makes a really cool device called the Uni-Bolt that literally just sticks up into the Unistrut and tightens with a thumb wheel. And then for all of our data signal we use DMX 5 pin to RJ45 adapters and then we use an expensive network cable to run between the lighting fixtures. And so in truth it took about a day and a half to bring the 1018’s up. The motion fixtures they have actually done over time so we started with a few and then added a few more and then a year later we ordered the rest of them and built the system out that way. [Timestamp: 6:23]

You make it sound pretty easy. Was there a particularly challenging aspect to this or part of it that was tough at all to get done?

We’re really blessed. It went really well. There were some things that we don’t have to worry about at Inspire Church that made it go quickly. There’s an LED wall that we installed for them that’s their main video screen and because of the brightness of that we didn’t have to be concerned too much with lighting fixtures washing into projection screens and such like that. So a bunch of things were in our favor on this project and it just went really quickly. [Timestamp: 6:53]

So you can let them go with it. Now, who heads the lighting crew there that you handed the system off to?

Clint Chinen is the technical director for the church and he has several folks on his team that kind of specialize in lighting but it all comes under his watch. [Timestamp: 7:07]

Well I’m sure they have fun with it especially with all the live music.

They do. They have a lot of fun.

Alright, well this has been good to hear since everything seems to have gone so easily. I know that lighting can really change things not just for entertainment but to really empower the church’s message. Another satisfied customer. It’s Bryan Cole of Axia Concepts in San Jose, California. A new LED elektraLite system for Hawaii’s Inspire Church. I’m sure they’ll call you back when they want to upgrade again.

Yes. We’re there fairly regularly throughout the year just making sure they have everything they need and partnering with them.

Thanks Bryan. It was great talking to you.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks for joining Bryan and me for the SVC Podcast. Show notes and equipment links for the podcast are on the web site of Sound & Video Contractor Magazine at svconline.com. Be sure to be back here next week for another SVC Podcast.

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