Gabe Loera Reflects Sanctuary Live Recording in Color with Chauvet Professional

	Urshan College 2022 Live Recording at The Sanctuary church outside Saint Louis, Missouri

Psychologist have long been fascinated by the color teal. And with good reason too! Combining the renewing qualities of green with the serenity of blue, it's invariably viewed as a hopeful and uplifting color. In some ancient societies it even symbolized infinity.

All of these characteristics, made teal (along with white) an ideal theme color for the Urshan College 2022 Live Recording, a day-long worship event and celebration of praise music at The Sanctuary church outside Saint Louis. Lighting designer Gabreil Loera tapped into the inspirational qualities of this classic hue when lighting this event, which featured a live concert that was recorded for later distribution.

Loera colorized the stage in teal and white at the start of the event, creating one of his own personal favorite looks of the show. (The other was at the end of the evening when he pushed all his lights out into the crowd to finish the concert with a flourish.) In between, he immersed the crowd and stage in color washes, many in various shades of teal. At times, he created a blanket of teal over the entire stage, seeming to embrace the large number of performers on it in a rejuvenating sea of hope.

Helping Loera achieve these transformational looks was a collection of Chauvet Professional fixtures, supplied by Pumpjack Productions. Featured in this rig were eight Maverick Force S Spots, two Rogue R2X Spots, and six COLORdash Par Quad 18 units.

Of course to keep his show varied and interesting, Loera incorporated colors other than teal and white into his show, relying of different palettes and light angles to reflect the distinct styles and personalities of the artists contributing to the concert. All the while, he was able to balance his lighting with the large video wall that occupied a prominent central position behind the stage.

"We varied the looks throughout the recording first by being able to change the colors for each song," says Loera. We were also able to highlight some soloist in each song, so we created an intimate mood for certain numbers. Then, we also highlighted the whole choir or chorale with dynamic looks. Working with the projection team, we adjusted brightness levels to coordinate with the video. We also color-matched backgrounds with the color transitions for each song so that we could compliment the lights to look good on camera."

Back washing played a key role in the immersive effects Loera created. To accomplish this, he had two of his eight Maverick Force S Spot fixtures on the stage deck behind the lead singers. (The other six units were placed on top of vertical truss structures and used for specials and crowd lighting.)

The six COLORdash Quad 18 fixtures in his rig also contributed to the backlighting. They were positioned on vertical truss and also used to backwash the musicians and choir -- something they did from a variety of angles. The RGBA engine of the COLORdashes along with the CMY color mixing and color wheel of the Force S Spot gave him a broad palette to use in his back washing.

Adding an extra level of depth to the looks on stage were the rig's two Rogue R2X Spot fixtures. Positioned directly over the first row of the audience, these 330W LED units were used to spotlight soloist. In this capacity, they provide a compelling contrast to the back lighting.

"I was very happy with the variety and the depth of looks we were able to create," says Loera. "My main lighting programmer Xavier Trevino deserves a lot of credit for this show, and in a broader sense so does our production director Nate Rippey. A really good thing about this project was how everyone worked together to create something special."