Young LD Turns to Elation Gear for Oregon Ministry Network Youth Convention

Over 1,000 students in grades 6 to 12 gathered October 9-11 at the Willamette Christian Center in Eugene, Oregon, for the Oregon Ministry Network Youth Convention. Apropos for a youth event, lighting direction and design was handled by one of the youngest lighting designers around, 16-year-old Caleb Franke of Illuminate Production Services. Caleb, who already has a number of lighting designs under his belt, had a large variety of Elation lighting gear at his disposal from discharge-based Platinum Series moving heads to LED-based moving heads, strip lights, Pars, blinders and video panels.
 
 This was Illuminate Production Services seventh year handling lighting for the event, an annual gathering of local youth that features guest speakers, performances and special parties. “When I was designing the rig we needed to transform the room from its church look to a special event conference style venue, so I really wanted to go with the full look of a floor to ceiling plot,” comments Caleb, who used the Elation rig for all of the event’s main sessions.
 
 The set was completely ground supported with no fly points. Fanned out on each side of the stage were three curved vertical trusses that extended to the ceiling with the majority of the moving heads spaced evenly across each. “I installed the Platinum Spot 5R profiles on the very top of each curve so that I could get a nice straight down spot at the top of the rig,” Caleb explains. “Then I placed Platinum Beam 5Rs below them and ended it with a dozen Rayzor Q12s near the bottom so we could get the nice silhouette feel from behind the band. With their super nice brightness, I was able to blind the crowd perfectly.”
 
 Integrated across the vertical trusses to create a grid of upstage LEDs were Opti QA Par’s and Epar QA’s, both full color RGBA Par lights, along with ELAR 216 Panel RGBW’s. Caleb then used three curved trusses across the floor end-to-end with more Platinum Beams and a few Design LED Strip RGBAW fixtures. “This was a fantastic part of the rig because I was able to backlight the singer very well with the frost in the beams, and I programmed the RGBAW strips in 28-channel mode so I could achieve pixel control throughout the trusses.”
 
 Also in the rig was a single 800W Platinum Profile 35 Pro fixture, used to backlight singers and blast a gobo effect, as well as a pair of new SixPar 200 LED multi-chip Par color changers, which Caleb used to illuminate fog effects. “The SixPars worked fantastic and were a very impressive feature of the conference and added so much energy to the show,” he says. “The amber, white, and UV is spectacular.” For background video effects across the upstage wall, Caleb created an 8-ft tall wall of 20mm pixel pitch EVLED video panels, which “gave us a nice panoramic palette to project images on.”
 
 In a favorite lighting look Caleb set fast blue and white panning in a random pattern on all of the LEDs, including the LED moving heads, while Platinum Beams in frost and all the other movers swept in at a fast speed. “I like to use this look on fast-paced songs because it makes the stage look very full and wide and it just shows everything floor to ceiling in a grand kind of way.”
 
 Caleb had a great experience lighting the convention for his peers, another notch in the lighting belt of a young and talented designer. He concludes, “It was a pleasure to work for Illuminate Production Services on such a great conference and all in all the Elation gear performed flawlessly.”
 
 Elation Equipment:
 12 x Platinum Beam 5R
 10 x Platinum Spot 5R Pro
 1 x Platinum Profile 35 Pro
 50 x EVLED LED Panel
 12 x Rayzor Q12 Zoom
 2 x Design Wash LED Zoom
 6 x Design LED Strip RGBAW
 2 x SixPar 200
 4 x Cuepix Panel
 6 x Elar 216 Panel
 12 x Opti RGBA
 9 x Opti 30
 12 x Epar QA
 1 x Arkaos Media Master Pro
 2 x Antari W15X
 1 x Antari Z-350 Fazer