Lights Rise

Dez Carrillo from The House Modesto in Modesto, CA brings us this stage design with lights and rustic elements.

This design was for their Rise 2014 Conference featuring Chris Hill and Benny Perez. Dez originally designed this stage/lighting design for a youth conference they had, but when that conference got moved to a smaller facility she was able to convince his Sr. Pastor Glen Berteau to let him do this design for RISE. The theme she had for this design was pallets and bulbs. Dez had seen so many creative things done with wooden pallets and antique incandescent bulbs that wanted to give it a try.

The “RISE” letter were made out of aluminum from a local manufacture. They came in bare white with no holes for bulbs or electrical. Dez bought Chevy Red-Orange paint from JEGS and painted the inside of the letters himself. She also drilled holes that would fit the string lights she had purchased. She bought one 25′ strand per letter just to make sure she had enough bulbs. An issue she ran into was that the bulb base upon contact with the aluminum letter would short out, so she ended up super gluing each base inside the aluminum frame.

The team hung them with basic gauge wire (rated for 50lbs) twisted on itself since the letters weighed maybe a pound after lights attached. The letters were 3′ tall and were run on separate dimmers. Their wooden pallets were borrowed from our food ministry. They allowed them to paint scriptures on 4 of the 30 pallets they borrowed. They used white paint and wrote scriptures that had to do with “rise” or “arise” in them. She bought the antique bulbs hanging down over stage from 1000bulbs.com and they were a huge hit. She just picked out 30 bulbs (3 different types) and hung them at various lengths.

Throughout the pallets in front of the choir, they put battery operated tea lights inside the pallets. And the cyc lights they had on either side of the drums were already in their stock, so she just took the handles off and turned them vertical. The string lights over the crowd as well as run through the wooden pallets were bought from Target. Dez originally had bought 50′ strands from an online company but when they arrived the bulbs did not fit the ballasts, thus leaving him no choice but to return them and buy the 25′ strands from Target and combine them to get 50′. In the end the ballast issue actually saved him $500.

This stage design was approved for a budget of $1,905 (this included cable rental for extension cords/adapters). In the end they came in under budget at $1365. This design took him 36hrs to complete from start to finish (including RISE letters plus all the issues that arose).