This year’s services featured an increased production value (photo: Mehgan Heaton)
USA - Nick Chang has been overseeing lighting for services and other events at Church of the City in Nashville since 2020 and again handled lighting programming and direction for five Christmas services this past December. Employing Elation’s Artiste Mondrian LED profile FX luminaire on the worship services, Nick hid the multi-functional moving heads behind a blow-through LED wall to create a variety of impactful and unexpectedly striking lighting scenes. Production and lighting design was by Jori Johnson.
Held in a 3,000-seat auditorium at Church of the City’s main campus in Franklin, Tennessee, this year’s services featured an increased production value, including a dedicated producer (Tommee Profitt) and expanded lighting design.
At Nick’s disposal were 32 Artiste Mondrian luminaires rented through 4Wall Nashville. “Previous years were more traditional so it was exciting to see that we could do more on this year’s production,” Nick stated. “I wanted a fixture that could shoot through a blow-through LED wall and not lose any intensity with gobos or when projecting saturated colours like red or blue. The Mondrians did a great job and played the biggest role in the service. The whole church was super impressed and I was too.”
Nick knew what he was getting with the Artiste Mondrian as he had used them on Church of the City’s 2021 Christmas services as well. “I found then that they were really versatile and did all roles very well,” he said. The Artiste Mondrian is a high-impact fixture that produces over 51,000 lumens of power. It houses a full design package that includes two gobo wheels, animation, and Elation’s 7-flag SpectraColor color mixing system.
Sixteen Mondrians along with strobe lights were positioned upstage on two trusses and hidden behind an 8mm blow-through LED video wall. In front of the large blow-through wall was a large ego riser on which a 40-piece orchestra played. Fronting the riser was another 8mm blow-through wall with strobes behind. Moo TV was the vendor for the video walls. “The Mondrians were completely hidden and super impactful,” Nick says. “We used them anywhere from gobos to beams but got different looks every time. They didn’t lose intensity at all.”
An additional 16 Mondrians worked from out in the house, at 20-foot trims, and were used for audience camera light to more intentional looks. “I was very impressed with how bright they are. Even for camera, I was only running them at 15-20%,” Nick said, adding that he also used the house Mondrians to sweep gobos across the audience or splay big beams around the room as during the aforementioned highlight moment.
Nick reports that the church was thrilled with the larger production and that people came up afterwards to complement the service, some even asking about the lights behind the LED wall. “That was something different than what we’re used to in a traditional Sunday service for sure.”

Latest Issue. . .