Selador Desire Luminaires Illuminate Worship Services at New Venture Christian Fellowship

	New Ventures Christian Fellowship with Seledor Desire D40s and D60s. Photo: Margie Ulm

In 2012, New Venture Christian Fellowship in Oceanside, California, experienced a full makeover, complete with over 129 brand new Selador Desire D40 and D60 luminaires. CCI Solutions helped achieve their goal of creating an immersive worship experience for the congregation, with a fully integrated, flexible lighting-control solution, and the Desire luminaires.

One of the biggest challenges facing the redesign of the 1,800-seat facility was finding LEDs that could stand up to the 75,000-lumen output of New Venture's powerful digital projectors. In order to get the desired effect, Rick Boring, CCI Solutions system integrator, specified 130 Desire D40s and D60s instead of traditional architectural fixtures: "The x7 Color System is breathtaking. The control, brightness, and saturation they provide are amazing. They unquestionably stand up to the digital projectors in the space." Jayna Williams, CCI senior project designer, agrees: "The D60s are awesome. There is so much color bouncing from the stage and the floor that it looks like we've got lights that project onto the ceiling."

New Venture's Desire luminaires help facilitate the immersive experience that senior pastor Shawn Mitchell wanted for his congregation, while drawing inspiration from the city's seaside location. "Walking into New Venture feels like being at the beach," Boring explains.

The venue's neutral-colored carpet provides a playful canvas for their Desire luminaires to interact with. "By changing the houselights by adding a little amber or orange, it makes the carpet look like sand, without making people look oddly discolored or unnatural. It's really neat to have that kind of control."

The Desire luminaires also work seamlessly beside the house and emergency lights on a Unison Paradigm lighting control system. "All the lights are integrated in the control system at New Venture," describes Boring, "and everything is controlled with ETC preset stations. It's really nice to bring up the color wheel and select what you need without having to fire up a console."

The luminares are also addressed across three universes, so the ceiling can be pixel mapped based on what is being projected during a service. "Initially, we hoped to include projectors to extend the color and image to the screens that cover the windows in the space. By pairing Desire and Source Four fixtures with pattern glass, we were able to extend the immersive experience, continue the color and add texture to the side walls."

As the design of the new space progressed, Williams and Boring had to make decisions about whether or not to purchase additional emergency lights. "Because it's an intimate space, we didn't want fixtures on the ceiling that don't illuminate when the houselights are on. It would look like the lights had failed," explains Williams. New Venture's Selador Desire luminaires were wired into the emergency-lighting system using ETC's DMX Emergency Bypass Controller (DEBC). "It's great because with this change, the system's full capacity isn't being taxed nearly as much as it used to be. In fact, the houselights can stay on for a much longer time, and demands on the inverter have gone way down."

"We are all very happy campers," says Boring about the completion of New Venture's integrated lighting control system. The redesign of New Venture Christian Fellowship has gone so well that CCI Solutions considers the installation a showcase on how entertainment lighting can be integrated within an architectural setting. Boring concludes: "I don't know of any other manufacturer who could have given us what we needed."

See ETC at PLASA Focus: Orlando, February 17 - 18, 2015.