Stage Designs

United in Chaos

Wyatt Johnston from Fellowship Bible Church in Topeka, KS brings us this rustic stage design.

They were inspired by Willow Creek’s design and thought they’d apply it to their series on Ephesians.

The vertical pieces were 2×4 studs they ripped in half. The facing boards were scrapped pallets and scrap wood from the local Menards. They broke and cut apart the pallets. The scrap wood from Menards was split in half along the grain to give it a natural interest along the grains.

They assembled these on the stage floor, using gaff tape as an outine for the overall space they had. The vertical supports were screwed into top and bottom plates that they made sure were level. Then they loose filled the interior. Once satisfied it was “random” enough, they used a finish nailer to fasten face pieces into the vertical pieces.

The main tall sections were 18′ high x 8′ wide. They erected these section using a pulley attached to their upstage lighting pipe, then fastened them to the wall and also attached safety lines to the ceiling for an extra layer of safety.

The smaller downstage left and right sections were built onto rolling frames they use for many things. They stand 8′ tall and 4′ wide. These on wheels were helpful for events that needed the stage cleaned (a wedding for example). They also now have black 16oz ‘comando’ fabric to covered the tall sections.

Lighting was accomplished on the tall sections by 4 Elation Opti Tri Par’s and a pair of Source 4’s with a gobo for the teaching portion of services. The small sections were lit with Elation Tri bricks.

The letters UNITED were made from palette boards, the “T” was also doubling as the cross. They lit these sections with three Source 4 ellipsoidal fixtures focused on “UNI” “T” ED” separately so they could emphasis the cross or the whole word.

They even build a custom pulpit for the series made from the same scrap wood.

Concept & Construction – Bill Horn, Kip Kraisinger, Brendon Krueger, Wyatt Johnston, Erik Oldberg, Daniel Morgan, and Diane Horn.

AllSpark Fencing Christmas

4 responses to “United in Chaos”

  1. Josh Cranor says:

    BILL HORN!!!! I LOVE BILL HORN!!! That is all. ps. The stage looks sweet.

  2. Rhonda says:

    Are there smaller 2×2 pieces across the top

  3. Rhonda says:

    would like more detail on how to build and cost

    • Bill Horn says:

      Hi Rhonda,
      Sorry for the delay in responding. For the tops, yes, we put 2x2s across, to which we added welded eye hooks. We used these to anchor the super heavy tall pieces to the support bars overhead using aircraft cable for a safety line. It also helped with keeping the piece from wanting to twist. Otherwise, the only pieces of wood going horizontally were the split scraps. Also, the vertical 2x2s were laid out randomly making sure to have enough present in any horizontal line across the pieces for structure, if that makes sense. Some were whole 2x2s, while others were split to maintain the random effect of the entire piece.

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