CFPB's Jumbo Screen, a volunteer creation...

If you've made it into CFPB lately, you may have noticed our new digital backdrop, an 18.5' x 8' Projection Screen placed on the floor in the middle of the stage. Occasionally, CFPB volunteers come up with CRAZY ideas. Most of them I laugh off or use as a training session in reality. @robertcrisler posed this idea, and after measuring it's cost-effectiveness and usefulness, we jumped.

Benefits of this are huge:

• During Worship portion of service, VJ is tightly integrated into camerawork.
• Next week, CFKids is coming in the WC, and among other things they are doing a skit. We're using the extra-large screen as a digital backdrop, establishing the look of the scene without a ton of messy props.
• During Teaching portion of service, backdrop reinforces the sermon series "brand" (graphic, color schemes, etc.) The screen serves as a really cool canvas for visual illustrations. If the teacher wants to show a photo as an illustration, we can do so in larger than life fashion. And on camera, the teacher is literally walking around in front of the illustration on the screen. The people can stay connected with him, and still take in the visual illustration.

Once we talked about the benefits it was a no-brainer... as long as it was cheap. We've been experimenting with Coroplast... a type of corrugated plastic sold in panels... To create the physical screen, we purchased several 8'x4' coroplast sheets, cut them to fit within our lighted truss frame, and stapled the sheets together. We also stapled the coroplast sheets to a grid of wooden 8'x1" strip (I think furring strip is the correct term?). Building this frame allows the screen to be hung from the top truss, and gives the screen something "more permanent" than tie wraps. The frame solved several problems: it made the screen straight, stable, and sturdy.

@robertcrisler then, with surgical precision, experimented with how to get the staples and coroplast seams to disappear. After 8-10 samples, the process of elimination led us to high quality scotch packing tape, and flat white paint to paint the entire screen (to give it a solid, seamless surface). Paint covered up the tape seams which covered up the staples, and the entire thing looks like a solid screen/wall... except it's made of low cost PLASTIC!

Cost on doing this was ridiculously inexpensive. A normal customized projection screen would cost in the thousands. Coroplast, with the flat paint, serves high quality functionality without breaking the bank. The coroplast was less than $200 (and we have a several sheets left over). Paint and furring strip wood was less than $50... So, for less than $250 we have this phenomenal, functional, custom-sized screen. Awesome.

Thanks to @robertcrisler and @thetarheelfan for putting in an INCREDIBLE amount of volunteer hours into making this happen.

(Another day I may blog about the logistical nightmare behind having a custom screen that is 25% wider than your standard HD 720p screen. Thanks to ProVideoPlayer and PVP's Network Node for making a incredibly difficult situation only semi-difficult.)