This entire set was created by reusing old set materials. The goal was to create a simple stage design that could be built fast and be extremely cost effective. “Light Boxes 2.0″ was designed to be a bridge from our winter set to our “Drive” set and to be used for the two-part series “Wishes.” We needed to do some construction on our East stage to get us ready for our “Drive” Conference set and “Light Boxes 2.0″ was designed to stay out of the way of that construction. For that reason this was an East only set. The West auditorium maintained the winter look.

How we did it:

The boxes where originally created for the West during the “How to be Rich” series. They were built out of scrap plywood. The boxes are 8′ high, 23″ wide, & 12″ deep. We screwed a Chauvet Colorado (with 30 degree lenses) into the top of each box with a 1′ section of luan painted black covering each light. The interior of each box was painted white to maximize the reflection of light. The lit surface of each box is a milky acrylic sheet that was screwed into the plywood frame through holes that we pre-drilled into the edge of each sheet. We used 2″ black gaff to cover the screws and to give us nice clean lines on the sides of the lit surface. We hung all 13 boxes in two staggered rows off a single 40′ stick of truss.

Behind the boxes we hung our Austrian curtain that we originally bought for the “Illusion” series. We used our Chauvet Batten 72s to uplight this curtain.

A Big, Gigantic THANK YOU to all our great volunteers for making 2010 such an incredible year. We look forward to how God will use all of us in 2011.

This years Christmas set was designed to be a winter set, something that could carry us through February. The look was designed to resemble a frozen landscape. The chandelier looking objects are meant to mimic giant icicles and the shatter boxes frozen ruins. The fabric was layered so as to give the impression of a foggy atmosphere. A big desire was for the entire set to be completely asymmetrical and to become a scene independent of the confines of our stages. In addition the desire was that if truss were needed for rigging it would not be seen and that the lights would become a part of the set, not something thrown on top of it.

How we did it:

No matter how complicated this looks let me reassure you it was really ten times harder then you think. I will start with the boxes because they took the most work. They were essentially two giant projects in one. The first part of the puzzle was the glass. We started off by referencing the TV show Time Warp on the Discovery Channel and figured out that you can gaff tape three panes of tempered glass together and then carefully break the edge of the center pane by striking it with a pointed object like a nail or a pick. This causes the center pane to shatter into many different pieces while the outside panes and the gaff hold the overall square shape giving us the frozen look we desired. Of course all the glass had to be manufactured to size and shipped to us. We then had to clean every sheet, tape, and finally crack the desired panes. This meant that each cube used 18 pains of glass. There are 43 cubes on each of our two stages. We also built Buckhead Church’s 37 cubes and Browns Bridge’s 84 frames at the same time.

The second part of the shatter box puzzle was the frame. Because the glass ended up being 3/8” thick when we taped the three panes together we decided that we would use 1” thick MDF strips that would be grooved with a trough for the glass to sit in ½” deep by 7/16” wide. This would leave us with just over 3/16” of MDF on either side of the glass to hold the glass in place. Once we decided on using 1” MDF strips, we knew that to keep the glass boxes perfectly squared we would need five different lengths of MDF. We ended up cutting full sheets of 8’x4’ by 1” thick MDF down to strips of 1” and 2” widths with varying lengths of 23”, 25”, and 27.” All these strips were then given the ½” deep groove with a router.

These two steps, the cutting and the grooving, resulted in over eleven 50 gallon trashcans full of saw dust and right at 3,300 fully grooved strips of MDF. From there we built a temporary paint booth and lined up all the strips 15 or so at a time on rolling carts and rolled them in to be painted black. They were laid out in the parking lot on tarps to dry and once dried flipped and ran back through the paint booth.

Once the frame pieces were done the individual frames were put together with the panes of glass.We applied a thin layer of liquid nail in the groove of each MDF strip and then placed the set of glass panes into the grooves creating a framed shatter pane. This was screwed on each of the corners to hold the frames together while they dried. Once dry, six of the pains were glued and screwed together to create the cubes.

The cubes were laid out across the stage in the predetermined design and structurally locked together using L-brackets. Touch up painting was applied after they were all in place.

The chandeliers were quite a bit easier. We started off having four different sizes of aluminum rings bent and welded by a manufacturer in Atlanta. We then cheesboroughed the rings together using a solid pipe across the back and two other smaller pipes angled towards the center. Once the structure was secure we hung it from the ceiling using rope and pulleys and tied it off just over 8’ off the ground to assemble the structure before raising it into position. We then started on the center ring and spaced the acrylic strands of crystal 4” apart all the way around with a jagged pattern to the lengths. We did the same thing to the other ring with offset patterns but kept the same distance between the strands. The center ring max length was 8’ long, the middle ring was 6.5’ long, and the outside ring was 5’ long. The fourth and outermost ring was attached on the topside of the connector pipes to give a 5” rise to the ring and allow the moving lights that we hung from this ring to sit slightly above the rest of the structure. This minimized the amount of the chandelier that the lights blocked while still allowing them to be a part of the design.

The fabric is actually made up of two different shades of the same fabric called icicle. We used the two shades in an attempt to give the look of natural gradients throughout the fabric. All of the fabric was cut at inconsistent angles and hung in such a way as to not reveal a design. This gives the impression of randomness. There are actually four layers of overlapping fabric inside the center area comprised of sizes around 18’, 15’, 12’, and 8’ lengths. The sides were hung in two rows comprised of 8’ and 5’ lengths. Each side of the proscenium is lined with 21’ lengths and above that are two rows made up of 7’ and 4’ lengths. The fabric is 58” in width but we hung them all at 40” wide to give them the amount of fullness seen in the design. Lastly we added 3 strands of christmas lights behind each piece of fabric. This allowed us to add them in to the design when we needed them and they disappear when we don’t.

STATISTICS:

• Total number of shatter boxes built for all Stages: 123
  • NPCC East: 43
  • NPCC West: 43
  • Buckhead Church (BC): 37
• Total number of frames built to create shatter boxes: 822
  • NPCC East: 258
  • NPCC West: 258
  • Buckhead Church: 222
  • Browns Bridge Church: 84
• Total Number of sheets of glass used for all stages: 2,466
  • Total Number shattered: 822
• Total weight of all glass used: 8 tons
  • NPCC East: 2.5 tons
• 36 Sheets of 1” MDF cut into 3,300 strips with ½” routed grooves
• Approx. Total number of screws used: 8,300
• Approx. 80 tubes of liquid nail
• Approx. 7,500 feet of 1” gaff tape
• 11 gallons of flat black pain
• 1 gallon of Windex
• 1 gallon of wood glue
• Approx 180 yards of fabric per stage
  • 750 yards Total
• Approx 1,400 grommets
• Approx 8,100 feet of stranded acrylic crystal
• Approx 3,000 linear feet of christmas light strands
  • NPCC East: 1,500 feet
  • NPCC West: 1,500 feet

Here is the video from the opener on December 19. All of the volunteers did a wonderful job to make this happen. Thanks for all that you do!

Great job with the opener last weekend!

In case you missed it or want to watch it again, here it is for your enjoyment.  Merry Christmas!

North Point’s iBand from North Point Web on Vimeo.