Stage lighting has become a staple in a lot of modern churches today. As churches have increased the level of their production, along with many churches now live streaming their services, lighting has only become more important to the modern worship service.
While haze, moving head fixtures, and video walls all look awesome, they’re also expensive and require a lot of overhead to operate in the service, making it more prohibitive for smaller churches to use. So what does a small or medium sized church need for lighting in order to help effectively communicate their message, especially with the ever increasing importance in having an online presence? Well, it’s a lot easier than you think. There’s three core sections to lighting: spot or focus lighting, wash lighting, and accent or atmospheric lighting.
Spot lighting is exactly what it sounds like, lighting a certain spot on stage. Spotlights go by many different names, from ellipsoidals, to profiles, to PAR fixtures, but their main purpose is the same, to focus on and light a specific subject evenly. Spotlighting is key to properly lighting an important subject on stage or on screen, be it the pastor, worship leader, or a guitar player or pianist. Generally, there are two spotlights used for any one subject on stage, with both lights in front of, but offset to the left and right. This helps to eliminate any shadows from one light being closer or brighter than the other.
Spotlights should also be angled somewhere roughly around 45 degrees above the subject. This allows you to have proper “key” and “fill” lighting that is so commonly preached in the film world, helping create the dimension to a subject’s face and body on camera. If the lights are too far overhead, you will end up with very morbid looking shadows on your subject’s face, and too low and you end up blinding the subject, and they will have a very flat appearance on camera.
Wash lighting is similar to spotlights, but instead of a focused beam on a subject, they spread a light in a wider area, effectively “washing” a section of the stage in light. These lights are great for less key parts of the worship team or stage, since they provide adequate lighting to be seen or shown on camera, but the focus is not intended to be drawn towards them.
Wash lighting also works well for backlighting your subjects on stage, because it allows the subject on stage to stick out from the background of the rest of the stage, creating the visual depth on video that viewers see in person. When you’re using wash lighting for backlighting, the angle isn’t as important, since your main goal is to just separate them from their background.
Finally, there is accent or atmospheric lighting. This is where churches can go bigger or smaller, depending on their budget and their vision for their worship service. On the more budget friendly side, there are stationary LED lights that can change colors through a DMX controller, in a more conventional PAR style fixture, or as a more “batten” or lightbar style, along with other fixture styles as well. These lights can light the back of your stage, curtains, backdrops, or other props on stage, or be mounted overhead, to provide texture and help set a mood on stage for a certain song or sermon series without breaking the bank.
Here at Creation Audio, we can help you if you’re in the process of designing or upgrading your lights at your church. Feel free to send us a message here on Facebook or email us at sales@creationaud.io for a free consultation today!
