Located in Melbourne, Enjoy Church, a fast growing, vibrant multicultural epicentre of activity, recently completed their new auditorium, capable of seating over 1200 people.
Forefront Productions were chosen by Senior Pastor Shane Baxter to design, supply and install all aspects of audio, lighting and video for the new auditorium. Forefront has a solid reputation in Australia for their supplying of total solutions for churches including staging, audio, lighting, video and acoustics.
“Right from the start it was clear that Enjoy Church were set on a path for quality whilst being conscious about cost saving and maximising every dollar invested,” commented Nick Burns, Forefront’s managing director. “Plans allow for future expansion, potentially more than doubling the initial seating capacity, and this meant that all designs and plans needed to facilitate future expansion whilst delivering exceptional quality in the initial stage.”
It was decided early on that the lighting would be a staged process, with the initial installation and design providing the complete infrastructure, with more elements like additional moving lights to be added later as finances allow.
An important consideration was Enjoy Church’s strong direction towards broadcast quality video. With almost 200 square metres of stage area, and only 8m clearance to ceiling, access to the lighting bars was potentially difficult. To solve the problem the stage lighting system was deployed on four main trusses with electronic chain motors providing automation for the truss to fly from floor level to final trim height. Four fixed trusses around the perimeter of the auditorium provide additional house lighting. A custom cable management system was designed to protect and conceal the many power and control cables that connect to each lighting truss.
DMX control is distributed via Ethernet cable, allowing for future expandability and changes in technology. Every truss and lighting point is complimented by DMX outlets, with DMX able to be distributed anywhere in the auditorium via the custom patch system located at the dimmer panel.
An array of conventional lighting fixtures provides a strong foundation of lighting for the stage and auditorium. Nick took the decision to install 38 Kupo Multipars fitted with barn doors for the house lighting and 48 Kupo Multipar HOG to colour wash the stage.
“For moving lights I went with eight Martin MAC575 profile moving heads because Mark McInnes, who is almost a good-looking guy, recommended them,” said Nick with a straight face. “I prefer MACs because of their quality, optics, brightness and great back up service. Show Technology has a great customer service philosophy. There are plans for more moving lights to be added in the future.”
A MA Lighting grandMA on PC system, with two touch screens and an external fader wing, takes care of control duties for the entire lighting system, with an MA Lighting Pro 2 Port Node providing output over two DMX universes.
”We like to specify the grandMA PC as much as possible for all of our church clients because it’s something we support very well,” commented Nick. “It offers real value for money, we’re not aware of anything else that has that amount of features for that kind of price point. It’s also very ease to learn to use.”
www.showtech.com.au
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