BANDIT BRINGS GATEWAY CHURCH INSTALLATION TO LIFE

Bandit Lites recently finished a lighting installation at Gateway Church. The Dallas, Texas church has grown from just 180 attendees in 1999 to nearly 16,500 attendees on Easter, 2008.

In November 2007, the church opened a new campus in North Richland Hills, a community in the center of the Dallas/Ft Worth Metroplex. The building is almost 50,000 square feet in size and sits on approximately nine acres. The weekend services at the NRH Campus are a mirror of those at their main Southlake campus with live worship and personal ministry, but also include a live video message from the Southlake Campus.

From a design perspective, Bandit Senior Sales Consultant, John Rolison said Gateway Church decided to go heavy with technology, including moving lights (Martin MAC 250 Spots and Washes), LED fixtures (AC Lighting and Coemar), and Ethernet control.

“In addition to the lights, Gateway purchased a very sophisticated lighting control console in the Jands Vista,” Rolison commented. “They are a very forward-thinking church and they are not afraid to invest in the technology.”

Both a challenge and the intrigue of this project was the concept of coordinating the production between two different locations.

Rolison explained, “Basically the South Lake facility is the main church that is hooked by fiber to the North Richland Hills facility. They do live video feeds between the two campuses. So the bands play together, the preacher preaches live and there is interaction between the congregations of both campuses.”

In order to achieve the live-feed, Gateway Church chose a Single Mode Point-to-Point fiber between campuses. This allows them 270mbs full-uncompressed SDI signals. They have 2 video feeds coming in from the main campus and 1 returning to the main campus. Utilizing EVS servers, they are able to perform slightly delayed live applications (such as the Sermon). They use the audio lines to feed click and tie the bands together during their full live situations. The fiber system only has 2.5 frames of delay between the campuses allowing them to perform live applications without any major time issues.

Currently Gateway Church uses the live application to synchronize a song between the campuses. Each campus sees the other campus twice during the song and this provides a sense of being one church with two campuses. After that, the remaining music portions are separate and respective to the individual campus. They re-sync for the sermon using the EVS Server delay technology. The satellite campus runs slightly longer the main campus and this time over run allows the time delay technology to work its magic. To the audience, everything for the Sermon looks live, as it is timed perfectly.

Once the installation was completed, Gateway Church brought in Lighting Director, Kyle Russelburg to be the lead programmer at the church.

“What makes the lighting unique here at Gateway is the fact that we run 120 events a month. So we needed a system that could handle the abuse of everyday use,” Russelburg explained.

Russelburg said that Jands Vista has been a significant part of the lighting package.

“We stream live on the web and to other campuses every week, so lighting for TV was a major need. With the Jands Vista T4 at front of house, we can recall and play back anything at any time. Working in the timeline made synchronizing up commercials and live onstage action so simple,” Russelburg explained. “I would say the most interesting part of the install is that you can control any fixture anywhere in the building from the Jands Vista. You can also overwrite the Vista from the local control interface from the Pathport Uno system.”

Russelburg added, “Bandit did an awesome job with this installation, and the support has been great. I’ve never had to wait for a response to any questions. They have been on top of everything.”