Stage Designs

Words Words Words

Caleb Baker from Christian Life Center in Tinley Park, Illinois brings us this stage design filled with words.

At CLC they do a new stage for every series. So this one was a challenge because of the amount of time it would take to paint.

They wanted one 5′ x 25′ piece and two more 5′ x 12′ pieces. The canvas cost them about $100. They used aluminum conduit to hang the canvas from ($50) and some cable to tie it into the ceiling ($40). Once they added paint, brushes and plastic tarps the grand total was just under $300.

To save some money on a frame for the canvas, they covered a classroom partition in plastic and stapled the canvas directly to that. Then they used a projector and a bunch of pencil led to trace the design onto the canvas.

Total work:

Three days designing the concept
One 18 hour day of painting
One 9 hour day of setup

A note from Caleb: It is possible to change your set with each series. Just focus on adding fewer elements and make the ones you keep more dramatic. Remember, lighting is your best friend in set design (seriously, you could drop some LEDs in a scrap yard and it would be cool… Actually that’s a good idea…). And the most important part (something I’m still learning as well) recruit and delegate the work. You’d be surprised how many people in your church would be excited to be given a paint brush and asked to help.

A big thanks to Jen McQuay, Brent Mcquay, Ed Marroquin, Dustin Frampton and Summer Baker for their creative work on the set.

Up and Down Illuminate

12 responses to “Words Words Words”

  1. Liz Flores says:

    El material de fondo es tela o papel kraft

  2. Deanna says:

    Totally love this. Pulling it off this week for thanksgiving set.
    different words of course. Thanks for the idea.

  3. Michael says:

    Love this design, and want to incorporate it into something we already have. Any chance you’d be willing to share the design of the words?

    • Caleb Baker says:

      Hey man, I’ll see if I can find the original file and email it to you. Just send me your email.

      • Cody Brandenburg says:

        I would also like to have a copy of the design if you can find the file. It would be much appreciated. My youth group is wanting to do something of the sort as a piece for our youth room.

      • Amy Mead says:

        I would love to try this as the focal point for our post-Easter set. Can you also send the file to me if you have it?
        Blessings!
        Amy

      • Connie Lossing says:

        Love to have this file also…We are doing a series on Luke and are going to do both names of Christ from Luke and phrases. But having this as a starting point would be wonderful!

  4. Kendra says:

    I would love the design also! I’m still a novice at all of this. So please excuse this elementary question, but how did you get the black letters to take on the color of the light? I’d love to use this for Easter. If I cut down the size of this and did it in other materials I think we could do this economical enough that it wouldn’t matter that it was only for two weeks!

  5. Bridgett Williamson says:

    Any chance you would want to sell this?

  6. James Norman says:

    If you still have it, I’d love to do this as a project for our youth ministry to bless our church!

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