Words Over Stars

Travis Scharn from FCC Santa Maria in Santa Maria, CA brings us this Christmas design.

During their series throughout December, their lead pastor focused on 1 word word each week. Travis knew he wanted to incorporate these words into the stage design in a major way.

In early November, he had their tech director CNC route each letter for the words using the same font they used for the series graphic. It’s a huge blessing that he has access to this CNC router. Each letter was a little over 3’ tall so that they could use standard sheets of plywood. The letters were painted off white/eggshell and then heavily glittered. Travis asked for gaudy and that’s exactly what he got. Each letter was attached to a couple of 2x4s that were painted flat black to create a floating word look. These words were hung from the ceiling over the stage. To finish off the look they created a Christmas star and hung it center upstage from the words.

4 LED curtains were purchased from Amazon for $40 each. These LED curtains were attached to 1” PVC pipe (painted flat black of course) with zip ties. Since the LED curtains were only about half the height they needed, 3 PVC pipes were used. The first was run as the top bar, which the entire curtain hung from. The first two curtains were attached to this top bar to create the length that they needed to cover the back wall of the stage. Another PVC pipe was added as a bottom bar to this first set of LED curtains. This bottom bar also functioned as the top bar for the lower set of LED curtains. 2 additional LED curtains were zip tied to this middle bar. A final lower piece of PVC was added as a bottom bar to the lower LED curtain.

The middle and bottom PVC pipes were partially filled with sand and then capped. The sand added the weight that was needed to keep the LED’s cascading in a clean and organized manner. The end result was 4 LED curtains that looked and functioned as 1.

In front of the LED curtain they put dead/deleafed trees. Two staff members and Travis drove out to a friend’s property and cut down some dead trees. After hauling them back to their church campus, they sprayed them with the same off-white/egg shell that they had used to paint the words and added a little bit of glitter as the paint dried. This glitter captured light ever so slightly, which helped the trees stand out from the LED curtain behind them. Each tree was placed in a bucket which was filled with concrete.

The church had vintage style street lamps that had been used as decoration years before. These lamps were placed around the stage in strategic spots. LED lighting allowed them to change the color of the trees. Other LED’s were used along with haze to complete the stage design.