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ADJ spots, beams and washes used for “Momentum Conference” in Illinois

ADJ automated luminaires were used extensively in the lighting rig for the recent “Momentum Conference”, a two-day Christian youth event in Springfield, Illinois. A combination of Focus Spot 7Z, Vizi Beam CMY and Focus Flex L19 fixtures created looks and effects that filled the arena venue.

With this year’s event, “Momentum” returned to a full-scale arena setting at the BoS Center, a 7,700-seat venue in downtown Springfield. The conference featured speakers, worship, and a performance from hip-hop artist Miles Minnick.

Lighting designer Alex Kanaris has been involved with “Momentum” for a quarter of a century, first taking on the role at just nineteen years old. Today, he leads the production through his company, Showco AV, an AVL provider, which supplied all the lighting equipment and rigging for this year’s event. Incorporated in 2003 as Automated Lighting Design with a focus on lighting, the company rebranded during the COVID-19 pandemic as Showco AV. It now offers complete audio, video and lighting support, as well as rigging and custom fabrication, for a wide variety of productions and events.

Following the pandemic, the “Momentum Conference” had been scaled back and hosted in large church auditoriums equipped with in-house AVL systems. This year’s return to a commercial arena presented a creative challenge, explains Kanaris: “In recent years the event has been in churches which were set up with full AVL infrastructures - including LED walls - so we’ve used video content as the backdrop to the stage. For this first year back in an arena, the budget just wasn’t there for a video wall, so I had to come up with another way to make the set look good.”

“I figured I’d throw a ton of movers at it and spread them out to fill the space”, he continues. “Where we would have had a giant LED wall upstage, we hung a truss mid-stage, about halfway up the trim, and filled it with beams and spots. It meant instead of a boring black backdrop, we could use beams and gobo projections to create lots of different background looks. It worked out really well.”

To generate texture, depth and dynamic background visuals, Kanaris deployed eighteen ADJ Focus Spot 7Z moving head fixtures, evenly distributed across the upstage, downstage and mid-stage trusses, six fixtures on each. They were instrumental in replacing the visual impact of a large LED wall. Gobo projections and aerial effects created layered backgrounds that shifted seamlessly between high-energy worship moments and more intimate teaching segments.

To complement the spots and deliver tight aerial effects, twenty ADJ Vizi Beam CMY fixtures were integrated into the rig. Six units were positioned on both the upstage and downstage trusses, four on the mid-stage truss and one on each of four stage carts. They delivered crisp, high-intensity beams that cut through the space, creating dramatic aerial looks during worship sets and energizing the performance by Miles Minnick.

Rounding out the rig were twelve ADJ Focus Flex L19 moving head wash fixtures. Four were mounted on the upstage truss, four on the downstage truss and four placed on carts positioned along the back of the stage. The combination of wash coverage, beam effects and silhouetting techniques helped create emotional contrast throughout the event.

(Photos: ADJ/Showco AV)

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