"Lighting" Video Transcription

Video Transcript: Lighting

All right worship space how lighting. And God said, Let there be light and light is probably the one of the most amazing gifts that God has given us light. We see color because of light, we see movement, because of light, we see one another because of light, the gift of sight is is is just a beautiful gift. So in light can make a difference in terms of worship, some lighting sources, natural light, it's the best kind of light. When if you have worship space where the light just comes in either through windows, or maybe you're sort of half outside, that kind of light lights up everything, you don't have shadows. It's natural, it isn't harsh, it's really the best light that there is, I mean, God really produced the best light that that we have. But it's hard to control, you have a cloudy day, you don't have a cloudy day, or you have light busting through one spot. And then you have a shadow because the light doesn't get there. I was in attend church the other day, and they have a big tent, and they have 750 people under this tent, and they have a few little lights in the ceiling. 

But they had some holes kind of in the tent, and the light would sneak through just near where the pastor was talking. And there was this light spot next to the pastor, and it looks like the pastor's sitting there in the dark. So it's, it's really hard to control natural light. And so we have electric lights, a lot of churches will have fluorescent lights, they're cheap, but they're not a nice color. And you can't dim them. So you can't control fluorescent light, you can turn them on or you can turn them off. And you know, and for a lot of churches, that's that's okay. But it's nice to have a little control and a little bit of control of the color, there's natural light, and then there's more warm light and fluorescence give kind of this greenish, you take pictures in a room that is lit by fluorescent lights, you often look at it, and they all kind of do they have this greenish tint to it. Today, there's really a revolution going on in lighting. It went from, you know, regular balls to fluorescent, and then the little spiral fluorescent things, people CFLs people have been replacing their regular bulbs with those. 

But LED lighting is really mean it's starting to really ramp up. LEDs use a lot less energy, you can make them any color that you want, they can be controlled by a computer via DMX can either a controller or you can just buy a little box that converts a signal to DMX he can control right? On your computer, I'll be showing you all those things in our church. But what can lighting do for the worship experience. Number one, it can focus attention. People don't notice it. But if you're in a in a worship space, and where the preacher is talking is sort of dark. And then other places in the sanctuary are more lit than he is. It's really hard to listen to the person talking. I mean, you don't know what you're just going on. I don't know, he's just not that engaging it but part engaging, but part of it is, is the light is making it hard for you to see. I remember we did this thing where we had someone in a at a lecture. And they would they would tell like a little one minute testimony. And then the light would go out and be total darkness and then a light would come up on the other side of the stage. And that person would tell a little testimony and the light would go out. 

You would pay attention you would listen. If you go to a play you you you watch the play, you're not distracted by the play that's happening on stage. Because it's the only thing lit you have nowhere else to look. If everything is lit around you. People have attention deficit disorder that you know that anything that moves, they're looking all over the place and they're not focused on what you want them to focus on. Lighting creates a mood with these new LED lights, you can create color, any color that you want. And, and and these colors give you a sense of warmness or a sense of you know, we in the winter will use some of these blue colors or we have a song that it's more contemplate if you use colors and it just creates a mood in the congregation. It gives your space variety you know, it'd be difficult to paint your walls New every week, but you can paint your walls with lights, decorations, you know lights can light up something and that decoration stands out now instead of just sort of blending in with everything, common lighting mistakes, too much of everything is lit up. So the whole place is lit up. And again, you just lose focus and everyone's eyes goes everywhere. And no one can concentrate on the one thing that you want if you if the lighting is subdued, and it all centers on on the communion table, then whatever is happening at that communion tables, whatever you want is going to be looking at and participating and because they have no other option number two, low light on the stage players. 

So you know, these are the people that are trying to lead and yet you can't see their faces this kind of shadow over their face. And it's hard to follow someone when they're their faces sort of in in shadow. Natural light overpowers the artificial light in the wrong areas. I mentioned that before you got natural light pouring in from some window lighting up this thing and then you got you have your own lights trying to light up the thing that you want people to focus on and you know, the natural light is going to overpower the artificial light. Too many switches in our church, you know, with our lighting we had before we had like 20 switches. And and you know that's how we control the light. So now it's the sermon time we want subdued lighting, switch, switch, switch, switch, switch, switch, switch, switch switch, I mean the blinking on and now someone's singing, I mean, it was just it was impossible. You couldn't you couldn't, you couldn't manage that many switches and you can't dim a lot of lights just you know you have fluorescent lights or whatever lights are and they're just on or off and it's a little bit jarring to just all of a sudden turn the lights on or turn them off. 

So the new lighting led DMX and the lighting revolution. The old theater lighting, I brought with me an old theater light. This is a heavy thing. This is your typical theater light, it's called a lico light. It has a ball Bennett that requires 500 watts of electricity Fennels was was another brand of the Ellipsoid. That's what this is and the old DMX that these theater lights could be controlled by a lighting board. You'd have a fader on the board and the fader, each fader controlled one light, but the lights had to be hooked together in a dimmer box. So these four lights have to go into this dimmer box. And then these four lights have to go into this dimmer box and all the lights have to be plugged into. So you need you need a way to plug in each light that's in the ceiling. And it was just it was a complicated thing. The old DMX you had all these sliders one slider per light. And that's how you did it. 

We used to have that system. But now we have the new LED theater lights and it took me a long time to figure out how that work because a new light, I have one over here. New light looks like this. And it's a lot lighter, a lot smaller. And you see there's a lot of little lights in this light. And each of these lights is a different color. So the new lights can do color. And I didn't understand how the new lights could do this. I mean in the old DMX you had one channel or one fader it would make the light bright or it would make the light dim and that okay, but now we have color. How does that one fader you like how do you change the color because usually the the light will have red, it will have blue and it will have yellow or Yeah. And then you mix the colors just like you know when you're in school. Red and Blue make what purple. So if you turn more of the purple lights on and the red lights, then you're going to get a purple look to it. Well think of a hot how's that do that because you have one fader per light and how are you going to mix these colors so I didn't understand it. So when I finally looked into it and figured it out, the duo know DMX controllers actually have 512 little faders 512. So one light may take like four faders one light has four separate controls. So this one controls the blue and you can dim or make the blue really bright. 

And then you can add the red and now becomes purple, or you can make it more red or less or more purple or deep purple or like purple or whatever it is you want. And so certain lights and certain lights will, will, will blink with the beat. And so some lights will have seven different faders off for one line. And I'll show you you know, when we get to my church, I'll show you in a video how that really operates. So now we can set up these new theater lights. And, and it's all come, it all gets connected to one little laptop, or, yeah, I think we have a little laptop that we connect to. And it connects via a little box that converts all the signal into DMX. So all the lights get plugged into this little box in a series, we have like 30 different lights, and they get plugged into this box and then the box gets plugged into the computer. And then on the computer, I see all these little faders these little control. So these seven right here belong to that light. And these three belong to this light and these three belong to that light. And I can just scroll through them real quickly, all 512 is very easy. And then what I do is I scroll through and I do these faders I get all the colors, everything that I want. 

And then you can hit a button that says save. save that as scene one, save this next thing as scene to save three, save scene four. And now at the worship service person just hit scene one, okay, that's the singing scene two the pastor preaching scene three and all the lights just automatically go to what you had set up. It's it's so easy now today. And, and what's nice about these LED lighting, one of these old things, this old clunky thing, this is 500 watts, whereas the new light is like 20 maybe 30 watts. So we have like 30 35 new LED lights, and all 35 of these lights are probably less than in terms of power less than one of the old lights and and and the old lights produced heat to the people up front we're you know, getting hot and sweating. These LED lights don't produce heat. It's just it's just night and day different. We're gonna do LED lighting and the whole sanctuary so we can you know, with a touch of a button, you can control the whole thing.

Well, how how lighting can enhance worship, it can be like a decoration, you know, every week, it looks a little bit different. Depending on your theme for that week. Again, it helps with focus. It helps set a mood. It gives a little variety, you don't have to redecorate your church every week. And so in a lot, a lot of ways that lighting can be special. And we'll in this next video, we'll show some of that at our church, how it works, and you'll see it in actual operation and you can start simple. I mean, these LED lights don't even need to be hooked up to a computer. You can just set them by hand. There's buttons and you can set them and just leave them. I just like the old one. So it's very, very simple and relatively inexpensive.