Blackhawk Church spreads its wings with ETC
Middleton, WI (4 August 2009) – Wisconsin-based Blackhawk Church was quickly outgrowing its facilities. The church’s ministry was reaching more people every week, but there wasn’t enough space or resources to serve the expanding flock. The same could be said about the church’s lighting system. The Blackhawk staff was tasked with lighting more worship services, as well as an increasing amount of special performances and day-to-day church activities – all on a limited budget. Finding enough volunteers able to run the lighting was also a big challenge. The solution came in November 2007, when Blackhawk opened the doors on a new, expansive facility in Madison, with ample space to grow. Inside the impressive site is a lighting system by ETC that gives Blackhawk greater functionality, ease of use, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to add on and expand.
The new building has several worship spaces – a large auditorium, a more intimate multipurpose room, and a youth area – and many offices, conference rooms, a nursery, and much more. Throughout, an ETC Unison® architectural control system handles the lighting. The Unison interface has been an important tool for Blackhawk, as it can be preprogrammed with various lighting looks accessed by the touch of a button, removing the need for a technician to be present at every event. And with such a busy schedule of weddings, receptions, conferences and more, event coordinators simply press a button and don’t need to spend time trying to get the lighting just right.
To keep up with the ten services that attract more than 3,700 people on a given Sunday and special events held at Blackhawk, an ETC SmartFade® compact lighting board and Sensor®+ dimming system control the lighting rig, which consists solely of ETC Source Four® ellipsoidal and PAR™ fixtures. Blackhawk Director of Technical Arts Mark Wyse and a group of volunteers run the system, and Wyse and associate Andy Geipel work together with the ministry leaders to design the lighting.
Says Wyse: “We were looking for a lighting system that could be easily scaled as our needs changed. Due to budget constraints, we had to start with the minimum and expand from there.” ETC’s Sensor+ dimming system does just that, because more modules and racks can be added over time. SmartFade was a good console choice, as well, since it has an easy learning curve. “I spent 15 minutes walking through the online tutorials,” says Wyse, “and when the console arrived, I had no trouble getting it to do what I wanted.” SmartFade’s portable size is another benefit for Blackhawk, as it can easily be moved from room to room for concerts or performances, and even outdoors. Most of the programming for events and worship services is prepared beforehand, with some tweaking and adjustments done as necessary on the fly.
The Source Four fixtures on the rig are used for regular services and also for video-production/broadcast lighting. Pairing the spotlights with soft diffusion gels evens out the light to prevent shadows or chalky complexions on camera.
After struggling with limited capabilities, lighting in the new building is a breeze. In the future, Blackhawk staff hopes to expand its lighting equipment, possibly to include automated lighting. But for now, the church has what it needs. “Our ETC equipment is rock solid and gets the job done,” according to Wyse. “Plus, when a rare problem arises, ETC’s tech support is phenomenal.”
