We are excited to be releasing the new Easter 2016 CMG Mega Pack on March 1st, 2016. It will be full of colored smoke moving backgrounds and still graphics for you to use throughout Easter and the rest of the year.

In anticipation of the launch we have put together a Free Easter Teaser Pack that you can use to create Easter screen visuals, slides and social media posts. It includes three blank stills, one title still and one motion still with the words “Easter Is Coming”, plus a bonus 15 second square version that you can post on Instagram.

We hope this pack of free still graphics and motions will help your Easter design preparations and make things a little easier for you this year.

Font used: Abril Fatface

Please! Notify Me When The FULL Easter CMG Mega Pack Is Available To Download (Join Newsletter)

Free Download Contents

Written by Micah Schuchardt from Hillside Chapel.

A few years back I was interning with a church of about 6,000 members, and I was the production intern for all of student ministries, which included three different venues in the church and about forty volunteers. I was put in charge of many things and among them was to train all of our volunteers in the booth and any new faces that I would encounter. I knew I had to come up with a set way that I trained people, so I came up with The Four “E” Volunteer Training Strategy. I have used this training method ever since and found it to work very well.

Educate

I always began with educating the volunteers on the technical aspects of the job.  Most of the time this was a one-hour session with the new volunteer on how to use the equipment. (This is specifically for computer and lights; sound is another ball game and as you know requires more time.) During this hour I put my phone aside and focus all of my attention teaching the volunteer the ins and outs of ProPresenter or the light board. For ProPresenter I teach them everything from creating new documents to the exact specs we use on slides, such as size, outline, and lines per slide. On the light board its how to work each individual light and how to program new scenes and everything in between.

Enlighten

Enlightening still includes lots of teaching and is an ongoing process; however it is all information that I would classify as non-technical. This includes teaching volunteers about the mood we set in the room as a tech team. Everything we do is about setting a mood for people to worship. Some of the topics I cover are the importance of matching a song to the perfect background. If it is a slower, more intimate, song there is no need to have a fast and vibrant background. I urge them to listen to the songs during band practice before services and show them why the background I used is there so that once they are comfortable they can choose the backgrounds as well and make confident decisions. I also cover a lot on lighting. I talk with the volunteers and ask them what the purpose of the different parts of the service are and what the intention of those portions of the service are. For example worship is dark because it is an intimate setting where people need to have the freedom to move around and not feel like everyone is staring at them so darker is better, and the message is a time for being challenged and learning so the lights need to be brighter so people are attentive and not falling asleep. Overall I just use enlightening to teach some of the more non-technical but key points that need to be covered.

Empower

The third E stands for Empower. It is often said that the tech team is only noticed when something goes wrong, and most of the time that is true. I do not want my tech team to feel that they do not have a strong purpose so I use Empowerment to fill them up. I let each and everyone one of them know every Sunday that they fill an important roll. Each member of the tech team is setting the environment that allows people to connect with Jesus on a personal level. I tell all of them that they are as important as the any of the band members on stage and that together we are all bringing people to Christ. This has helped so many volunteers to feel that they are making a difference and it also helps create dedicated volunteers.

Excellence

Excellence is simply here because if the Creative Pastor or Trainer can do all of the others E’s effectively then it will lead to excellence and if we strive for excellence in all we do then we will always be getting better and will have success.

I have found great success using this simple and straightforward strategy with my volunteers. I hope you find it useful as well.

Written by Seth Pierce from Opendoor Church

Equipment Used

• 11 DMX-3CH-4A LED Decoders
• 11 16-foot 5050SMD RGB LED Strips
• 60M of 4-conductor connecting wire
• Black Plastic Tracks
• Coroplast
• 3M Double Sided Foam Tape
• Solder
• Time (and lots of it)

Venue Details

Our sanctuary stage is divided into three sections.  The left and right sections under the projectors are 16’x18’ and the center section is 30’x19’.  Our creative pastor took a relatively square photo of the stage and I added a 1’x1’ grid over it in GIMP.  After that, I just used trial and error to place the strips.  You’ll notice in the picture below that there are two gray bars running through the center section.  These bars are painted black and house PAR blinders, Chauvet Intimidator Spots, and Chauvet Intimidator Washes.  As the bars, wall, and lights are black, they ‘disappear’ when they’re off.  The goal was to place the strips so you couldn’t tell there were light bars placed in front of the strips.

Design Details

As you can see, the strips are spaced out to maximize coverage.  The 16-foot strips were cut to length and 4-conductor wire was soldered to each strip to connect everything.  This was a very time consuming process; it took about 15 hours to solder all the strips.  We used EvZ® 4 Color 20m RGB Extension Cable Line for LED Strip RGB 5050 3528 Cord 4pin connecting wire as it was cheap and kept the wiring neat.

This wire works well, but I wouldn’t exceed the lengths shown in the photo below.  There is a small, but noticeable decay in brightness towards the end of each strip.  I attribute this to the amount of LEDs we’re powering and the high wire gage.

11 DMX decoders (DMX-3CH-4A 4 Amp 3 Channel LED DMX Controller/Decoder) drive the strips and are powered by laptop style power bricks.

The power estimates listed below are horribly inaccurate.  I really shouldn’t be trusted to do math late at night…  Red lines are the LED strips and blue lines are the connecting wire.

Mounting Details

For mounting, we used black plastic track available from your local hardware store.  I don’t have any specifics as to which tracks were used as our associate pastor handled all of that.  Coroplast was placed on top of the LEDs to diffuse the light a bit and prevent it from looking like a bunch of colored dots on the wall.  This was then covered with 20% window tint from Wal-Mart to allow the strips to ‘disappear’ when turned off.  With this amount of tint we run the strips at about 50% power, depending on the color mix.

When it came time to hang everything, we used 3M double-sided tape.  This stuff is ridiculously strong.  We had to straighten up one row of strips and ended up peeling the paint off the wall!  Hanging only took about 2 hours as we projected the grid up on the wall.

Download Package (full-resolution diagrams, photos and a master .XCF GIMP schematic)

See It In Action

On February 25th, 2016 I asked the Visual Church Media Facebook Group to post their Easter series branding graphics. Over the course of a few hours I was flooded with creative and beautifully crafted Easter graphics for churches around the globe. Below is the collection of Easter graphics I received. Source

Gateway Community Church

Illuminate Church

Vertical Church

New Life The Hague

Champion Forest Baptist Church

Crossroads Church

Centerpoint Church

New Haven United Methodist Church

Cornerstone Church Bluffton

Brooks Alliance Church

Calvary Lighthouse United

The Life Church

City Point Church

Celebration Church

Journey Church

Jacksonville Chapel

Northbridge Church

Ostern Feiern

Blessed Hope Church

Christian Life Assembly

Crossroads Community Church

Grace Christian Fellowship

iWorshipCenter

Calvary Church of Naperville

Highpointe Church

HeartsEase Family Life Church

New Life Church by Tim Medina

Cultivate Church Miami

We are excited to be releasing the new Easter 2016 CMG Mega Pack on March 1st, 2016. It will be full of colored smoke moving backgrounds and still graphics for you to use throughout Easter and the rest of the year.

Besides putting together the Free Easter Teaser Pack we have also release a Free Easter Colored Smoke Photoshop Template for anyone to use to create their own graphics.

Font used: Abril Fatface

The colored smoke moving backgrounds in the Easter 2016 CMG Mega Pack turned out beautifully and I have gotten a lot of questions on how we did it. This behind the scenes article outlines the tools and techniques used to create the pack.

The Idea

On January 18th I released a visual mockup with the words “Easter Is Coming” and stated that I would be doing a colored smoke theme for Easter 2016. The response was overwhelmingly positive and it set the bar high for the Pack’s release on March 1st.

The first thing I needed to do was test my theory that colored smoke would look good filmed at a high frame rate and played back at a regular speed.

I bought a sample pack of five Enola Gaye smoke grenades and fired them off inside my garage to see what would happen. I filmed the experiments with a Canon 60D and a 50mm lens. The resolution was 1280×720 at 60 fps.

I imported the footage into Adobe After Effects and set it’s frame rate to 30fps. To slow down the footage even further I Time Stretched the layer to 300% and turned on Frame Blending.

The results were stunning and I knew I was on to something special.

Pre-production

The next step was to get my ducks in a row and prepare for the shoot. First, I hired my friend James Adams from Summit-Films to do the shoot. I knew he had the skills and equipment to pull this off.

I also gathered and purchased everything I needed for the shoot including 100 Enola Gaye Wire-Pull Smoke Grenades, black and white photography backdrop paper, tarps, duct tape, gloves, masks, fans, boxes and lots of other things that you should have on hand for any day and night shoot.

I also secured a location at a friends farm. Shooting inside my garage was a bad idea and this farm gave us the perfect environment to shoot inside a sheltered environment and outside at night.

Shoot Day

From 1pm until 9pm we fired off 100 smoke grenades. It took about 20 shots until we figured out out how to best control the smoke, light and camera to create the look I wanted. We found that by putting the grenade in a box and covering up 95% of the opening with a lid allowed us to control the flow of the smoke. If you ever plan on replicating this make sure you let the grenade burn for about ten seconds before you throw it in the box. If you don’t, the box will catch on fire from the sparks.

James brought a lot of gear to the shoot and we ended up filming with his Sony FS700 mounted with a Sony FE 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS Lens. We zoomed in very close to the action from about 10 feet away. Everything was shot at 240fps which gave me silky smooth footage to work with.

At night we brought out our lighting rig which consisted of two Kino Flo Diva-Lite 400 Universal Fluorescent Light Fixtures. These are specially designed lights that don’t flicker at low frame-rates.

Post-production

The camera we shot with created a file that I was not familiar with. It created a wrapped .mts file that contained all the clips we had shot. I couldn’t import this file into After Effects so I used ClipWrap to unwrap the files into usable QuickTime files.

I used Adobe After Effects CC 2015 to create all the motions. I loved the natural look of the billowing smoke and I didn’t want to overlay any extra textures or graphics over it. To enhance the images I used various plugins such as Curves, Magic Bullet Looks, Fast Blur, Hue/Saturation, Transform, Linear Wipe and Fill.

Launch Day

On March 1st, 2016 this pack of 11 moving backgrounds, 6 announcement titles and 1 countdown timer was released to the world. It’s contents will be seen by thousands of churches during the month of March and throughout Easter.

I’m really happy with how the pack turned out and I hope you will consider using it this Easter.

Easter 2016 CMG Mega Pack

On March 7, 2016 we have scheduled to take churchmotiongraphics.com offline for the day to do some major upgrades to the CMG Subscription website system. We are completely removing the old system that has been in place since 2012 and replacing it with a new one.

Our team has been working on this transition since December 2015 and we are finally ready to make the switch.

Most users won’t see a noticeable difference from the old system to the new one, however there are a few tweaks we would like to point out.

Website Changes

Recurring Subscriptions

We are excited to be bringing credit card recurring subscriptions back. We lost this functionality two years ago and only PayPal subscribers were given the option to have their subscription automatically renew every month or year.

The new system will allow every new subscriber and those who renew using the new system to have recurring credit card payments.

We will be maintain all active recurring PayPal and legacy recurring credit card subscriptions plans (prior to April 2014) as long as payments keep being accepted.

Download Access For Expired Accounts

Standard Yearly and Standard Monthly Subscribers will always have access to download their past packs whether they have an active subscription or not. This is an industry first! Once a new pack is released you will activate it and it will permanently be added to your account.

New Checkout and My Account Pages

This isn’t a big deal, but we spruced up a few pages by making them more attractive and easier to use.

Easy Upgrades*

In the past upgrading from one plan to another was done manually. Now plan upgrading can be self-administered. The system will examine your account and automatically give you credit from any unused time left from your past purchase. *Legacy accounts will need to be manually upgraded.

American Express

Yep! Now you can subscribe using an American Express credit card. Along with Master Card or Visa.

No More A La Carte

Unfortunately with our new system there isn’t an easy way to add a la carte purchases. In the future we may bring this feature back, but until than you will need to purchase a Premium Yearly Subscription to access past CMG Mega Packs, CMG Motion Bundles and CMG VJ Loops.

Changes For Current Subscribers

Password Reset

Once the new system is launched all current subscribers will need to reset their password through the “Forgot Password” page.

Nonrecurring (NR) Subscribers

We don’t keep credit card information of nonrecurring subscribers so when your account expire you will need to login and join a new recurring subscription using the new system. Make sure to renew your account during the month of your expiry date to get the best renewal rate.

PayPal Subscribers

We will maintain all active recurring PayPal subscriptions as long as the payments keep being accepted. If a payment fails than your subscription will expire and you will need to login to your CMG Subscription and renew using our new system.

Legacy Recurring Credit Card Subscribers (July 2012 – April 2014)

We will maintain all active recurring legacy subscriptions as long as the payments keep being accepted. If a payment fails than your subscription will expire and you will need to login to your CMG Subscription and renew using our new system.

If you have any questions about these changes please contact CMG Support.

We are loving the excitement over the release of the Easter 2016 CMG Mega Pack and we want to give you another free Photoshop template to help you out.

Here is a Free Smoke Text Photoshop Template for anyone to use to create their own graphics. As a bonus we have included 7 high-res colored smoke photos to use in your design work.

Font used: Abril Fatface

Bonus High-res Photos

Twice a year Oral Roberts University hosts a “College Weekend” where over 500 perspective students visit our campus to see what the school has to offer and if they want to make this their home for four years.

About College Weekend

One of the highlights of College Weekend is always the night of worship. We host a Campus Worship once a month where the student body and greater Tulsa community gather for worship and prayer, but College Weekend is always special because of the addition of 500+ excited potential students.

Pre-production

We are always trying things to create a more immersive environment. This time that meant lowering our 15′ by 25′ Absen LED video wall to use as a backdrop and adding environmental projection to our chapel for the first time. The projection system involved five projectors mapped to the room and lined up with video wall so graphics could seamlessly spill off of the screen onto the stage and beyond. To achieve this effectively I knew that we needed to find significantly better graphics than what we had been using.

Choosing CMG

I started researching where other churches that took their visuals seriously got their media from and Church Motion Graphics was the name that kept coming up. I then met with ORU Worship Director Kristen Thomas and Director of AV production Casey Phariss, and we decided to go with the Premium Yearly Subscription to get the full CMG collection of media.

From there, myself and lighting designer Caleb Gentry began to collaborate on the set up of the projection system and which backgrounds to incorporate with the lighting. We literally waited up until midnight to download the new Easter Smoke Backgrounds (March 2016 CMG Mega Pack) the night they were released and they were used to great effect on several songs. Most dramatically with dark stage and Beams of light illuminating singer Maya Gibson as she belted out “No Longer Slaves”, while the smoke billowed behind her. The backgrounds blend together so well that they can be easily transitioned between one another to follow each section of a song and the intensity of whats happening on stage.

Response to the night has been incredible, with attendance of over 1,700 and comments on how great everything looked, how excellent it sounded and most importantly; how everything worked together to achieve an engrossing atmosphere of worship.

Written by Justen Reddick (ORU Audio Visual Services Supervisor)

You can now purchase CMG Subscriptions as gifts for other people.

How to gift a CMG Subscription

1. Log in to your account*
2. Visit the “Upgrade Subscription” page
3. Choose a “Gift CMG Subscription” and purchase it
4. In the “Gifts Purchased” section on your Account Settings page click the “show gift link” beside any gift that has not been redeemed yet
5. Share this link with your recipient
6. Once activated the status of the gift will be changed to “Redeemed”
7. At any time you can cancel paying your recipients subscription by clicking the “cancel” link in the “Subscriptions” section on your Account Settings page

*If you don’t have an account please contact CMG Support and we’ll create a “Basic” account for you.

The popularity of colored smoke graphics this Easter was elevated by the release of the March 2016 CMG Mega Pack. This pack includes an assortment of slow moving smoke backgrounds that are designed to go behind worship lyric text.

To help churches with their Easter seasonal branding we also released three free resources: Free Easter Teaser Pack, Free Easter Colored Smoke Photoshop Template and Free Smoke Text Photoshop Template With Photos.

Cedarville First Assembly of God

Life Mission Church

College Place Baptist Church

Forest Park Baptist

Immanuel Baptist Church

Cultivate Church Miami

The Sound Church

C4 Church

Redeemer Church

Familienkirche Barmen

Victory Faith Church

Second Baptist

Bethany Brisbane International Church

Grace Community Church

Fox River Christian Church

Abundant Life Church

Grace Union Church

Metropolitan Community Church of Greater Dallas

Harvestland Church

Agincourt Pentecostal Church

The Pentecostals

Woodlawn UMC

Regiogemeinde Riehen

Colombo Gospel Tabernacle

St Peter’s Anglican Cathedral

Gateway Church Geelong

The Well

The Life Church Dallas

The Pentecostals of Lafayette

Teppo Haapoja a talented photographer from Finland and friend of CMG.  He just launched a new shop on Creative Market full of beautiful lifestyle, landscape and still life photographs.

To celebrate the opening of his new store, Teppo has generously given us five high-resolution images from his collection for the CMG Community to download and freely use.

Download 5 Free Nature Photos
Browse Teppo’s Shop

The Idea

About two months away from Easter we sat down as a department and looked at a few different options as our opener for Easter services. The idea that won out was a video set to the song For the Cross with the video being projected onto our worship leaders wearing white clothes. So we set out to find a way to make this happen.

Our first idea, and the one we eventually ended up using was to rent a projector, set it up by our front of house area, and aim it at a screen that set in the middle of our stage. We sent out for quotes from local production companies, and the numbers didn’t really align with our budget for our project, so we started looking into plan b’s.

There was a local theater group that had a 10k Sanyo projector they let us borrow for free, but upon testing it we discovered that two of the four bulbs were burned out. We took our chances and bought some questionable bulbs off of amazon. The two bulbs together were only $70 and it allowed us to see what this projector was capable of with all four bulbs running, but sadly one of the new bulbs blew in the first 30 minutes. So, back to the drawing board.

Testing

At this point we are a week and a half out from Easter. Milestone Church had already (very graciously I might add) sent us the video we were going to use for this element, so the only element we were lacking was the projector. We toyed with the idea of renting scaffolding and putting the band in from of our house screens, but they’re 25 foot screens and it would have dwarfed the vocalists in front of them, so we reached out to a company called Sardis Media, who agreed to bring in one of their new projectors and let us play with it one day to see if it would work.

The model we chose to start with was a Panasonic DZ13KU 12k, and we really liked how well this model worked from the start. Sardis jumped through a lot of hoops for us to make this rental work, I can’t say enough about how great they were in this project.

So at this point Easter is 4 days out, we have our projector and we are beginning the set up and testing phase. We had some old 7’ steel pipes mounted on a base that we set up to mount the screen to. The screen had a truss frame and it sat perfectly on the base of the steel pipe base, and we tied the top of it with cable tie rope. The whole design had to be built around the idea of it disappearing in two minutes after the element was done. The rope and pipe worked well for this and after placing a few sandbags it was sturdy enough to work.

Tech

We ended up deciding not use our current SDI infrastructure to run feed to the new projector, so we ended up setting up the iMac from my office up next to our front of house lighting board and run HDMI out to an SDI converter, then run SDI straight into the projector. We also used a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 interface to run audio to our audio console, with the left and right channel split for clicks and tracks, clicks just for the bands in ears then tracks for the house to blend with the band. Luckily we already had a second comm headset up there and I scheduled a second ProPresenter operator that day to run just that computer.

Once we had all this set up I set to programming the light cues that would run during the video. We have all of our cues triggered manually as opposed to midi triggers so once I was done I sat down with one of our lighting volunteers and went through all of it and we were ready to role.

Let’s Do This!

So day of all the transitions for the stage have been talked through and practiced with our stage manager and stage hands, and we are ready to role into service. Two minutes before service we start playing a two minute countdown video. The video fades to black and the band is already in place, our worship leaders walk in front of the screen dressed in all white and with white mic stands. The video starts to play and this is where it gets tricky.

Our main IMAG screens our blacked out to draw attention to the center of the room. Our lobby is set to receive the same feed as our screens, so I had to switch the lobby feed to one of our cameras so that our overflow guests in the lobby could see what is going on. We have two recording decks, one of them gets the program feed that goes to the main screens and the other records a clean feed with none of our keys in the video. I left the first deck to record program feed the whole time, but I switched clean feed to record a different camera each service so at the end of our four services we had four different looks we could piece together in post.

Everything went off flawlessly, the band sounded great, props to our audio guys, we are constantly impress with the work they do. Most everything you hear in the video is being played live, our band did amazing all four services. We had the band set to the side of the screen with bass and electric actually playing behind the screen.

So at this point the song ends, and we role into another video that plays on our main screens. We had our ProPresenter operator upstairs close the shutter on the projector as to to not be seen from this point on in the service. Our stage hands had just over three minutes of video to tear down the screen, move it behind backstage curtains (no easy task with a screen that ended up being 17’ X10’), set up the poles and sandbags back stage for the screen to mount to, tie the screen up, move bass and electric forward from where they were behind the screen, and be ready to role into worship.

During this gap I also switched all my video outputs back to clean or program feeds. It worked perfectly all four services and I couldn’t be happier. There was another break in service where a video rolled and that same stage crew had to bring out a teaching TV, table, chair, and 16’ ladder with props in less than two minutes, so it was a busy day for those guys. At the end of service we had about 15 minutes to tear down the ladder and props, reset the stage the stage with bass and electric pushed back and bring the screen back out. We had the base’s for the screen spiked and once they were in place we played the test grid from ProPresenter to do the final alignments of the screen before we tied it in place for the next service. At this point we set the center screen to our Easter logo and our regular ads on our IMAG screens and we were ready to go into the next three services.

Written by Chad Pellham (Live Video Director) of Journey Church

See It In Context

Everyone who purchases a license for ProPresenter6 gets access to download the Free Church Motion Graphics Video Sampler that includes 10 moving backgrounds in both HD and SD resolutions.

Follow these steps to download your free moving backgrounds

1. Open ProPresenter6
2. Open the “Info Center” if it is not already open (View->Info Center)
3. Click the circle badge graphic with the text, “Redeem Free Media Bundle” in the “Looking for great content?” box
4. Click the “Video Sampler Download” image with the RenewedVision logo and “Click to View” button
5. Click the “Add All To Cart” button
6. Click the “Proceed to Checkout” button
7. Log In with your Worship House Media account (create one if you don’t have one)
8. Click the “Submit Order” button at the bottom of the page
9. Click the “Download My Media” button in your pop-up window
10. Click the “Download” button beside each free CMG moving background you want

Visual walkthrough

With LED technology becoming more advanced and readily available, more and more churches are turning to it for their stage designs. But like with any new technology it comes with its price and steep learning curve. This is the reason LightPixel Designs was formed, in order to help bridge the gap.

Types of LEDs

There are two types of LEDs: the standard analog LEDs, and the newer digital pixel LEDs. Each of these types come in various forms form strips to nodes and everything in between.

Analog LEDs are just standard RGB and each connected in series exhibits the same color, so If I have an 8ft long strip all of the LEDs on this strip will be the same color. The color however can be changed and set by controllers, which are DMX ready. At LightPixel Designs we have modified the whole concept of the RGB controller. We don’t believe in cutting, crimping, or soldering wire unless that’s truly what you want to do.

Instead we do everything over RJ45 cable meaning you can connect controllers to the LEDs by a standard RJ45 patch cable making the connection truly plug and play. We still do offer the standard screw terminal controllers but we have adapters that can convert any screw terminal controller to use our signature RJ45 technology. This conversion also works on the other end, in that we can make your already owned LEDs use our RJ45 technology.

For the digital LEDs which are commonly known as pixels, allow you to control every LED individually on the strip. We also have the same RJ45 system which allows longer runs of data and makes connections simple. Pixels however take up large amounts of data, as each led requires 3ch of DMX data, meaning 170 pixels takes up a whole universe. To make pixels usable for the average church who doesn’t have tons of universes available to pixel map these LEDs we use media severs to map live video across the LEDs.

Central Church (Miami, FL)

They contacted us to help them redo their stage design and help make it more modern with through the use of LEDs. We designed and provided the following set for them, the total installation only took half a day.

Equipment Used

• 3 LightPixel Designs Pixlar RGB (27ch DMX controller)
• 12 Pixlar 1000 (1-meter-long RGB profile with diffusion)
• 14 Pixlar 1500 (1.5-meter-long RGB profile with diffusion)
• Mounting Screws
• Various lengths of RJ45 Patch Cables
• 3M Command Strips

Project Details

The back wall was divided equally to make the spacing between each strip equal making installation easy. The spots for each strip was marked with tape and then using a level the strips were mounted to the wall. The strips will hold up with just command strips but due to the humidity we chose to reinforce it with two small screws one in the top and one in the bottom. The strips already have the mounting holes for the screws to go into.

After the strips were on the wall it was just a matter of connecting them the RJ45 patch cable and plugging the cable right into the controller. The controller has the power supply built in and is addressable to any value. The client told us the hardest part of the install was cleaning the cables but that they had it all hanging and working within a couple hours.

We provided the client with the rendering below as well as the instructions on how to assembly it. Our team was on stand by for any questions they had and to provide support, the installation so simple they had no questions an going into this nobody had any LED experience.

The Pixlar RGB pictured to the left is a high density RGB profile. It features our signature RJ45 already attached, which can be adapted for any controller you may already own. Each unit comes in standard sizes such as 0.5m, 1m, and 1.5m; we can also make custom sizes if required. Each strip feature 72 RGB 5050 LEDs per meter and runs off 12v.

Westside Believers Church (Taft, CA)

Their creative contacted us to help them redo their stage design and help make it more modern with through the use of LEDs. They came to us with pictures and videos of Hillsong’s recent stage design and wanted to mimic it on their stage. We designed and provided the following set for them, the total installation was about three days, which is typical of for Pixel installations as there is more work involved.

Equipment Used

• 26 rolls of Pixel Tape (5-meter-long rolls with 30 pixels per meter)
• 2 LightPixel Designs Artnet controllers (32 universe controller)
• 11 Pixel Receivers (2 Pixel SPI outputs each)
• Wood for the frames
• Various lengths of 3-core extension cable
• 12 – 5v Power supplies
• JST Jumpers for corners
• MadMapper

Project Details

The frames were built by the client in order to save the shipping cost. They felt comfortable soldering and cutting the strips so we provided rolls and instructions and they made the frames themselves.

For churches not comfortable with soldering or cutting we can make the pieces exactly to the size you require. To make the corners on the strips, we used JST connectors making each strip modular, if a strips breaks it can easily be swapped out without having to redo the whole frame. The frames were then hung with aircraft cable in the desired layout.

Our team handled the mapping and hardware configuration of the shapes. We choose to use MadMapper to pixel map the strips as it allows Live video input via Syphon from other applications. They were already using QLab to play their videos so we were able to use syphon and take their Live videos and play it over the pixels. Other installs we do we also use MadMapper and most of the time take live input from ProPresenter, which many churches already have.

About LightPixel Designs

LightPixel Designs was started in the later half of 2015, with the sole purpose of revolutionizing LED technology within the stage design community; especially church stages designs. Our team had worked previously with several churches to help introduce them to LED technology.

In our first experiences with LED we had many long nights throughout the set change and faced countless obstacles. We quickly learned that LEDs require a large amount of time to implement and can be a real pain to work with some times. Our company was started with the mission that we would help churches and others implement LED technology faster and easier than every before. Our company is now working with churches across the globe with their stage designs, as well as developing new technology in order to keep simplifying the process.

Our goal as a company is to enable anyone to pick up our products and within a few minutes have a completely working piece, all without pulling their hair out or breaking the bank.

Our team is willing and capable to help you and your church join the LED revolution. Please visit our website to learn more about our services and contact us directly to learn about our special rates for the CMG community.

LightPixel Designs

Written by Alex Roscoe, CEO of LightPixel Designs

Nick Newman is the lead pastor at Propel Church and has generously provided six free still graphics for everyone to use. Feel free to follow Nick on Twitter and tell him thanks.

• Mother’s Day
• Mother’s Day Blank
• Baptism x2
• 90 Day Tithe Challenge
• Need A Bible?

Download 6 Free Still Graphics

We finally did it! The Visual Church Media Facebook Group now has over 10,000 members.

I created this group on July 30th, 2014 with the vision to see a community of visual church media leaders build up, encourage and equip one another. Over the past twenty months, thousands of leaders and churches have been well served, because of the wisdom and knowledge this community has openly shared.

Every day questions are answered by a community of caring and experienced people who love God and love His church. It’s a blessing to see the body of Christ share, interact and help one another in this beautiful and meaningful way.

*Enjoy all the free stuff and sale items until May 15th, 2016

Linear Continuous Movement = Distracting Moving Backgrounds

People will often state that moving backgrounds are distracting in worship and here is one reason why.

Not all moving backgrounds are created equal. Some of them are made in haste and not professionally designed for worship lyric projection.

One of the culprits is continuous linear movement. This is motion that moves in one direction at a constant speed. This can create a feeling of vertigo especially when something is spinning or moving upwards or downwards at a constant speed.

To fix this problem a motion should include properties of acceleration, deceleration or randomness. When sourcing new motions be on the look-out for this downfall.

We are excited to introduce our newest member to the CMG team, Kendall Conner. He will be working as our Communications Director and will oversee all of the various avenues of sharing our content with the world.

Kendall is no stranger to the church media community. He is the founder of the popular blog, TheCreativePastor.com, where he shares helpful tips and tricks for the creative side of ministry. He also serves in his local church, Piedmont Chapel, where he leads their creative team.

He and his wife, Holly, live in Greensboro, North Carolina, with their toddler son, Calvin. They’re also expecting their second child in the new year. Kendall loves The Office, Apple products, snapback hats, and all things creative.

We love Kendall’s heart for the Church and his passion to serve it well. Welcome to the team, Kendall!

Have you ever faced the struggle of trying to find high quality images for your church’s slides, social media posts, website, or printed materials? Then, once you find something that looks good, you see that it costs a fortune. We’ve been there, too.

We developed CMG Create with the heart to make quality graphics available for all churches, no matter their budget. All of our images are completely free! With the boundary of cost eliminated, ministries of all sizes are now able to enjoy these resources.

CMG Create is loaded with over a thousand high-resolution images that were specifically designed for churches. And, the library is continuing to grow! We’ve also included over 700 Pro Layers that work great as overlays for your designs.

Our team spent two months in development to create the advanced features that make your downloading super easy. There are even Worship Extreme, Proclaim, Dropbox, and Google Drive integrations. 

Since launching, we’ve seen 140,000+ downloads of these images. We know you’re going to love them, too.

Visit CMG Create