Planted Columns

Zachary McCrorey from Transformation Church in Indian Land, SC brings us this awesome column look.

From Zachary: This stage design was envisioned by our Creative Arts Pastor, KJ Scriven, to support our fall’s “Back to School” series. The creative direction was University, a Greco-Roman vibe with columns, statues, and greenery infused throughout graphics and videos. KJ thought it would be great that our stage design complimented those elements in addition to a white glossy stage floor.

The 8′ columns were sourced from stumpsparty.com. They are essentially very light cardboard pieces taped together. I was nervous at first unboxing them, because I didn’t believe they would look how I imagined them to, but once the first one was built, I was pretty sold.

All of the greenery was purchased from Amazon. Small pieces of white gaff tape were used to tape all of the floral pieces onto the columns. The tape completely disappeared once the columns were suspended. We cut two parallel holes about a foot from the top of each column, and then inserted a wooden dowel through the column. Once tie-line was tied to both ends of the dowel, the columns were carefully lifted up and connected to our electrical battens. I used various LED Pars to front-light the columns. They also looked really cool just backlit by ambient lighting.

The GAM vinyl flooring (manufactured by Rosco) was purchased through BnH. There are various colors colors and lengths you can choose from. We went with the glossy white which delivered a cool effect from the reflections of the lighting designs and LED Wall visuals. It’s essentially a sticker…just pull the protective backing off, and stick it down. We ran into various issues of trying to minimize “bubbles” created while placing it down in one full sweep from stage left to stage right. As the width of our stage is 40′ wide, it was pretty impossible to do so (two techs had to hold the vinyl up on each side, one had to pull the backing off, and one had to squeegee). Instead, we rolled out one entire row and taped the downstage side down with white gaff tape. Then, we cut the row into 3 segments. That allowed us to work with a smaller piece of the vinyl. After we pulled the backing off one one of the sections, we used the squeegee to slowly lay while smoothing out that section (the taped downstage side to upstage). All seams were then secured down with clear tape. All in all, it was around 15 sections that pretty much disappeared to the naked eye.

*Note – this vinyl will tear pretty easily and/or wrinkle if you aren’t careful. We could not drive our genie on it once it was laid so be mindful of that. Small little tears and little nicks will happen as well. I just place small pieces of white gaff tape over them.

The drums and keys were placed on risers, and the legs were hidden by very thin MDF boards wrapped in the same vinyl to simulate a seamless look.

All in all, it was a fun design. The white floor is holding in there, and its going into its second series! We hope to utilize it within our Christmas series as well (a grand total 5 months total).

Lighting Package:
(20) Chauvet Colorado 1 Tour
(8) Martin MH1 Profile Plus
(8) Martin MH6 Washes
(4) Martin Stagebar2

@transformationchurch
@zach.isaiah