The ACME Anvil Co. series at Riverview is coming to a close so I thought it was about time I get the build information up…

The series “ACME Anvil Co.” is about weights, things that slow us down from going all out for Jesus.

What we did: The set is comprised of shipping crates made from disassembled pallets and some new materials. We were able to round up about 4 dozen pallets over a period of a month prior to the beginning of the series. Pallets are made to be structurally sound so taking them apart perhaps wasn’t the best idea but the alternative was spending a lot of money to get all-new materials.

There were tons of folks that got involved in this build and a handful of companies that donated materials. It has been great to have the help from people around Riverview grow as we continue to do more aggressive sets.

We put some 4×4 legs on the drum riser and ’skirted’ it with pallet materials. One crate was hung stage right and a replica anvil was made and set on one of the crates. Kristie made two stencils that we used to spray the logo on the crates. Five additional crates were constructed for our other venue.

Tomorrow we’re transitioning to our new set for the next series.

Our first set in the new building expansion at Riverview, probably one of the most challenging and mind boggling sets we have ever done.

What we did: Where to start? I guess I’ll go chronologically… Kate and I put up the bubble-wrap on the back wall (yes, that is bubble-wrap) on Sunday afternoon following the last message of our previous series, Sketch. Monday we cut and painted the weird quadrilaterals with help from Kristie, Kate and Linda. Tuesday and Wednesday we got our lighting hung and Andy built the projection screen. A tip about hanging lighting: make sure you get two inch outside diameter pipe, not two inch inside diameter and really, it may not be a bad idea to take a clamp with you to double-check the size. The projection screen is a 2×4 frame with eighth inch underlay and a painted canvas drop-cloth mounted to the front.

Hanging everything was a huge challenge but we’re trying not to attach anything to the wall in the new building. What complicated the hanging issue was that everything had to be hung in a particular order because it is all different distances from the back wall. We’ve gotten some great positive feedback about this set and I think it set a higher standard for quality in our future designs.

The projected images and video are all masked so that they only appear on the hanging shapes and screen. Kristie and Noel handled that process so I don’t know how long it took but there are ongoing adjustments because of how the hanging shapes settle from week to week.

There are a few more pictures here.

We are currently working on logistics for our next two sets, one should be fairly scaled back and will be up for two weeks and another that is relatively involved which will run through October into the first part of November.

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.