ATLANTA – North Point Ministries, Inc, Buckhead Church here is a 15-year-old establishment with a 3,000-seat auditorium that hosts four services every Sunday. The church is in the process of expanding its technical equipment to enrich the quality of its in-services. Part of this expansion involves the increased use of media and lighting to add to the dynamic format of the services.
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Video forms a main element of the set designs: video imagery is projected onto set pieces or run through plasma screens on stage and used as a backdrop to performances. This is enhanced by the generous use of LED lighting. The set is changed every 3-4 months to keep things fresh and new for the churches attenders.
Images of the pastor, who alternates between Buckhead Church and North Point Community Church, two of the six NPMi campuses in the greater Atlanta area, are also projected onto screens during the sermon.
When it came to finding a flexible, user-friendly way of controlling the variety of lighting and video effects, Lighting & Scenic Director at Buckhead Church, Jared Roman, turned to ArKaos MediaMaster.
“At first we started with just projecting basic video loops to screens and televisions on stage,” says Roman. “Now using the ArKaos MediaMaster we are able to map and layer video elements and also control a whole array of Chauvet Epix V2 LED fixtures taking advantage of their on-board KlingNet protocol.
“MediaMaster’s KlingNet Mapper allows us to control the Epix fixtures and blend them with the video mapping onto the scenic set elements. Video mapping is key to creating our dynamic sets. Now we can include video loops and add textural effects on the Epix strips and other set pieces.
“For example, we created a set composed of 19 vertical boxes lined with Elation LED tape. We used MediaMaster to drive the 19 universes for the LEDs inside these boxes with the LEDMapper, as well as the Chauvet Epix V2 LED strips. At certain points during the service the LEDs in the boxes were controlled directly by our Jands Vista L5 console – usually when they showed as solid colour (see photo IMG9517) – and sometimes they were driven by MediaMaster which mapped both the Epix V2 LED strips and the LED’s inside the boxes to make one huge medium/low resolution video wall (see photo IMG9602).
“On another occasion we used MediaMaster to projection-map and warp video onto two horizontal strips of Coroplast (see photo IMG 8784) as well as split up video to vertical plasma displays below. In a different setup (see photo IMG 5602) we used MediaMaster to drive our Barco HD30 projector to surface map five large panels and seven smaller plasma displays on stage.“
Roman spent seven years working in corporate and entertainment lighting before coming to Buckhead Church ten years ago. “I have always worked in the lighting industry, but it is fun learning the video side now,” he says. “Once you start, you find yourself experimenting with the masking and layering of video clips, all of which can make a large impact to the looks on stage. By keying out colours you can make the images sparkle or you can pull out specific colours and layer them together to create incredible textures on stage. When I combine this with the Epix you can create movement and energy rather than just seeing generic video images.”
So why chose ArKaos MediaMaster? “ArKaos is a powerful media server at an incredible price. I did some research and liked the price point, but it was the functionality that really sold it to me. From simple beginnings we are now able to control all scenic video elements from our lighting console. We can crossfade between clips, add layering and masking to change the effects – and all with very little training. MediaMaster is so intuitive we (Roman and assistant, Andy Rivas) are largely self-taught, but AC Lighting Inc, with whom we have a longstanding relationship, and ArKaos have both been very quick at responding to any questions we might have.”
ArKaos’ new MediaMaster dongle license has also proved extremely useful: “Because we are a multi-campus organization I can now travel from one site to another without taking the physical media server – I just take the dongle and re-register it to a new machine. And if a computer goes down on a Sunday we can simply pull in a new one without having to acquire a new license code! We currently have five or six ArKaos licenses throughout the organization to give us maximum flexibility without having to re-rig and de-rig everything from scratch each time we do special events. There’s no end to the creative possibilities it has given us.”
More information on ArKaos PRO media servers and software can be found at www.arkaospro.com.
ArKaos PRO is distributed in the US by A.C. Lighting, Inc. www.aclighting.com.
More information on Buckhead Church can be found at www.buckheadchurch.org.
