Stephen Lechner » Stage Design

Stage Design: Curtain Call

It’s been a very long time since I’ve blogged about stage design and this one is great. This month’s series is called, “Curtain Call,” so we knew we wanted to make it look “Broadway-ish.” My dad made the gold footlights to go across the front of the stage. When I was 12, I remember making marquee signs with cardboard and Christmas lights. I would poke the lights through the cardboard to spell out words. So we had a guy build some poster frames and drill holes for us. Then, we took mini bulbs and stuck them through (see pictures). Just like a real marquee but much cheaper! We brought back the red curtains from Heroes and swaggered them. The whole thing turned out real nice. And, we stayed within our budget of $500. Pretty nice for a medium-sized church! I love my job and the many people on the production team that helped make this stage a reality. Thanks guys!

Essentials Stage Design

(This post is part of Creative Chaos at RagamuffinSoul.com - check it out!)

I know all ten of you have been waiting for our newest stage design pictures, so here they are. It was a sad time taking down the Heroes set but we got over it. Okay, down to the details.

The theme of our series is Essentials and we are looking at the basics of the Christian faith. They are simple foundational truths that all Christ-followers should believe and agree on. So we decided to go with alphabet blocks as our imagery.

We took 8 sheets of plywood and built “steps” that we were going to put the letters on.

We then cut out foam for the blocks and spray painted them (20 letters plus 142 feet of border). This took some time and is not fun in the hot sun. Side note: regular spray paint melts foam…lesson learned.

We caulked the letters and borders onto the “steps” to give the illusion that the blocks were stacked (blocks spell out “Essentials”).
We then hung little cardboard boxes created to look like alphabet blocks from bent metal to look like a giant baby mobile.

This is the result (click to enlarge):

It looks a lot more simple than our Heroes set, but took a LOT of hard work. Especially the spray painting…not fun. I really like the look of the stage though. It turned out better than I imagined. Oh yeah, for pre-service music we played Rockabye Baby (lullaby renditions of Metallica, Coldplay and Beatles).

So there you go. That’s all you get.

Stephen

P.S. - I have to give props to JoAnna Wise. She does an awesome job at this.

Set the Stage

Here are some photos from our set change last week (click to enlarge). I am very pleased with the results. Our team did an amazing job (there were lots, even though you only see a few in the pictures).

For those of you interested in all the technical stuff, we found the chandeliers at a yard sale and Salvation Army. Two separate chandeliers, matched perfectly. We painted them gold. Total cost? Seven dollars. The art frames were found at a second hand store and those were painted gold with brush strokes of black to antique them. The art for the frames was printed on a high gloss banner paper that we painted over with Mod Podge to look like a painting. And the fabric was a steal at five dollars a yard. The entire set was achieved for less than $500. How’s that for creativity?