I have a saying I use over and over (which if you read this blog for any length of time, you will hear a lot), “Planning will set you free.” As much as I like to keep my options open in my personal life (I’m an INTP after all…), when it comes to live production I plan as many details as I possibly can. It can lead worship leaders (especially less technically minded ones) to think that we can do anything, and that it will be easy. Next challenge…Īll this resourcefulness has a downside I’ve discovered. Need to run 40 channels into your 32 channel board? No problem, swipe the board from the children’s room and sub it in. Need another monitor mix when all the Aux sends are maxed out? No problem, we can swipe an unused group out, or maybe a matrix out. Tell us something can’t be done and we’ll figure out a way to prove you wrong. Really good tech people have one thing in common: we love a challenge. By using light and the lack thereof, we make progress in all three areas. The church technician’s primary job is to support what happens on stage, remove barriers to receiving the message and to enhance the experience. In doing so, the congregation spends fewer “processing cycles” to use a computer analogy, trying to decide what to look at, which frees them up to hear the message. He’ll spend more time listening and less time looking around.Īll we’re doing is using the body’s natural tendencies to draw attention where we want it. By dimming upstage and stage left and right and putting the speaker in a nice pool of light (large enough for him to walk around if that’s what he does) the man in the pew’s attention is automatically drawn to the speaker. Strike that, they know where to look, but their internal hardwiring has them looking all over the place for the brightest object. The poor person in the congregation doesn’t know where to look.
Consider a stage that is fully lit during the message. You can also apply this to the pastor who is speaking during his message. That shifts the focus of the audience where you want it to go. If the guitar player has a solo for a bridge, bring a light up on him or her. To accomplish that, you can light the rest of the band with richer colors and less overall light, and put a little more light on the leader. So if you have a worship set on stage, you typically want the worship leader to be where people are looking. What if we as lighting designers could help direct the congregations attention where we want? Guess what? We can! We do it by using shadows and the absence of light. Where does one look? I would suggest that when the entire stage is lit evenly, the people in the congregation don’t know where to look. Now think about what happens when you wash the entire stage with bright, even light. So if our eyes are drawn to the brightest thing in the room, what else is drawn there as well? Our attention. In my living room right now, when I look up I see the tv. More likely than not, they darted to the lightest thing in the room.
#Media shout 4 showing seperate monitor for stage tv#
In a darkened room, with one or two sources of light (the living room at night with a tv on works well), drop your gaze to the floor, then look up. As humans, our eyes are pre-programmed to jump to the brightest thing in our field of view. In fact, I would argue that the most creative and effective lighting I have seen includes as much non-light as light.
I’m not sure that’s the best use of light, however. In addition there may be "side-fill" monitors to provide sound for areas on stage not covered by the floor wedges.Everybody knows that the purpose of lighting in the church is to put light on the stage, right? I know a lighting director (from my high school musical days) who said his rule of thumb for stage lighting is to, “flood the stage, and make ’em pink” Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of churches follow the same advice. This way the lead vocalist can have a mix which forefronts their vocals, the backup singers can have a mix which emphasizes their backup vocals, and the rhythm section members can have a mix which emphasizes the bass and drums. Each monitor mix contains a blend of different vocal and instruments, and a floor monitor speaker or "wedge" is placed in front of the performer. With a separate monitor system there may be 8, 12, or more separate monitor mixes, typically one per performer. This splitter may be part of the microphone snake or it may be built into the monitor mixer. In this case a splitter is used to split the signal from the microphones and direct inputs between the monitor mixer and the FOH mixer. Larger clubs, concerts and houses of worship will use a completely separate system for monitors with its own mixer and monitor sound engineer.