After 15 years at their original location in Orlando, FL, Discovery Church outgrew their space's ability to effectively support their ministry. Purchasing a former Sports Authority retail space, the church renovated the building to support their needs for worship services. Headlining the new lighting rig are fixtures from PROLIGHTS distributed by A.C. Lighting Inc.

“The PROLIGHTS fixtures are a major upgrade for Discovery Church,” says church Lighting Designer Anthony Stofflet. “We went from very simple systems that really put us in a box as far as creativity was concerned, to a lighting rig that significantly opens up the creative options for us. We weren't that familiar with the PROLIGHTS brand of LED fixtures, but A.C. Lighting Inc. set up a lighting shoot-out for us, and their fixtures truly blew the competitors away.”

Discovery Church installed EclProfile FS ellipsoidal static profiles for their primary front stage wash; Jet Spot3 moving head spotlights; Stark 400 moving head wash fixtures, and Ra 2000ProfileHB moving head fixtures—a full complement of PROLIGHTS fixtures for all their stage illumination.

“The Eclipse-FS ellipsoidal fixtures have a nice, crisp focus with no haloing effect at the edges of the beam,” says Stofflet. “We've installed 71 of them, making up all of our front wash and static specials. The ability to fine-tune the color temperature of these fixtures for video was a key feature for us.”

“The JetSpot 3 fixtures are surprisingly bright for such a small fixture,” Stofflet describes. “The colors in the color wheel are well-chosen, and the beam is punchy—it can definitely cut through our LED video wall. Their prism, gobos, frost, iris—it really blew us away.”

“The Stark 400 wash fixtures have a great honeycomb lens, with seven homogenized individually-controllable elements,” Stofflet continues. “It also has a good output to it, and the built-in wireless DMX is very helpful if you want to place one in an unusual location.”

“The Ra 2000 Profile HB fixtures were brand new at the time we looked at them,” Stofflet says. “In fact, Discovery Church was one of their first US installations. They are a great moving-head special fixture. Having a moving light, we could use as a key light was critical for me, as our stage changes all the time. The feature set is excellent: massive zoom range, shutters, animation wheel, 18,200 lumens of output, two frosts (one for soft focus and one for heavy diffusion). With a color temperature of 6200k, the video guys love them, and it means I have less work to do in getting them to match our other key lights. It also comes with a CTO wheel to provide a warm color temperature when desired.”

Curt Contrata, lighting designer with Stage Equipment and Lighting and consultant on the project, adds “The PROLIGHTS fixtures are very impressive. The color rendition is great. The profile fixtures are very bright, and all the wash units look great as well.”

“A goal I had with this installation is to limit the number of vendors providing gear, to reduce the potential for ‘finger-pointing' if issues come up,” says Stofflet. “A.C. Lighting Inc. makes that easy and was able to be our ‘one-stop-shop' for all of our lighting needs, so there's only one company we need to turn to should a problem arise.”

Online streaming has become a critical part of churches' engagement with their congregations, and Discovery Church's investment in their lighting rig has proved to be a significant benefit to this aspect of their ministry. “With our new gear,” states Stofflet, “our streaming quality saw a significant improvement. We would not be able to achieve our current level of production quality without it.”

(written by AC Lighting Inc)