The ‘Wreck’ set came down last Sunday afternoon and this one started going up the next day:

What We Did: After much deliberation about the material we should use to build the giant tipping cross we ended up with 2 inch right angle steel for the primary structure and 3/4 inch right angle steel (like that found at the edges of a drop-ceiling) for the bracing. There are RGB lights mounted to the floor, walls and ceiling that light the interior of the cross. There was much grace from above in the building of this thing, the angles never seemed right but the outcome was exactly what we had imagined.

The mirror prop was an oddly difficult build. The ‘mirror’ is actually an exterior commercial window with two panes of glass joined (it is HEAVY). The frame is 2×4s that were notched out to hold the glass and legs attached appropriately so that the thing wouldn’t fall over. There are two fluorescent lights mounted to the back of the frame that were attached to a dimmer unit so that they could be controlled from our lighting console.

Ken (pictured above with long blonde curly hair) and Rick (the Bassist wearing the black shirt and a tie) helped a TON with the cross build Monday through Wednesday. This set would have been impossible without their help. Andy actually did most of the work on the mirror prop, again, I’d have been in big trouble without his aide.

Kristie, as always, did some excellent work with projection. The back wall projection during music segments is abstract video stuff. The primary projection for text was a great feel against the rest of the projection.

Yes, we have already ripped out the old series and built up the new. I had a TON of help on this one, which is good because not only was I sick most of the week, the wife and kid were even more sick than I was.

What we did: There were about shfifteen-teen design revisions on this set, fortunately we decided on the final design before build started. The lumber you see on the wall in the above picture is just some of the support for the final product. The basic construction involved attaching bits and pieces of cut up underlayment, beadbaord, hardboard, pegboard, particle board and plywood to the supporting two-by-Xs. The weird white lines and gray areas are just a rough projection so we would know where to put the supports.

Very special thanks to Rick, Mark, Andy, Ken, Eric and Eric who all had their hands on this set, their work was absolutely phenomenal.

After a late start (Friday night, barely more than 24 hours before the first service on Saturday) we tied up the eXposed set pretty well I think.

What We Did: Kristie made up for my poor response on this one with some stellar projection design. I put up four 40×70 inch pieces of what is essentially whiteboard and distanced them from the wall a few inches. The curtains on the side are the black fabric from our Evidence/Encounter series set and they were almost two feet short so we tied them back to the wall so it wouldn’t look just downright silly.

Sure we’ve already moved onto the next series, but here’s the info on this one anyway…

We took a little bit more of a “bare” approach to Christmas decor this year. The trees have one strand of 25 blue C9s each and there are 32 60 watt G40s and G30s hanging above the stage.

What We Did: While others were setting up the trees, we were making all the cords with sockets for the hanging bulbs, then hung those using existing power from recessed light fixtures.

This is quite possibly the most time consuming set we have ever undertaken…

What we did: Before we had even finished the Plus Nothing series, we started the build process for this set. We bought a couple sheets of 1/8-inch hardboard (like pegboard but without the holes) and cut a couple of them down to 8-foot x 3-inch strips and painted them. The Monday before the series started we took down the old set and put up most of the grid lines (using finishing nails to attach.)

We started on the upside-down tree by projecting the design and tracing the edges. Using jigsaws we (mostly Teresa) cut out all the tangly bits. After 10-12 hours of cutting out tangly bits we were ready to paint. The tree is hung using 16-inch hex cap bolts that run into the ceiling and are supported by a big 2×12 which spans across a couple rafters. The trunk is made of a 3/4×96x16 wood panel and the tangly stuff is 3/16-inch hardboard.

Of course, it wouldn’t really look like much without the projection. Using a projector at the back of the auditorium, a keynote presentation with a different assembly of video/picture for each song, the announcements and the message fills in the details. The ceiling mounted projector fills into a single section of the grid and has a bit of splash-over into the section below it.

I’ve been at Riv a couple times this week and snapped this shot of the current construction progress:

It will be nice to not have five services every weekend.

And it’s that time again… we’ve been working on the upcoming set at Riv (the PostSecret series):

Teresa has been working like crazy on this set, it has been awesome to have the extra help. Drew stopped by today for a couple hours and worked on the ‘tree’ cutout in the foreground of the pic. Kristie is putting together some superb projection stuff.

It’s been a more involved setup and is therefore more of a time hog, but Tara has been very forgiving. And on the topic of family, here’s a shot of Leah dressed up as a fuzzy pumpkin:

So, that’s it. You’ve been updated thoroughly.