On Site: Brooklyn Tabernacle

From time to time on this blog, we’ll cover live production in action. When you see the On Site designation, the article will highlight a recent visit to a venue that pushes the envelope on live production.

Last week, at the end of the Streaming Media East 2010 show, held in New York, I had the chance to visit the Brooklyn Tabernacle.

Originally constructed in 1918 as the 4000-seat Metropolitan Theater, the venue became the new home to the Brooklyn Tabernacle and its world-famous Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, in 2002.

The congregation had purchased the building in 1997, after years of disuse and decay. The Metropolitan had gone through various uses, first as a live theater, then a movie theater before being cut up into a quadraplex in the mid 1970s.

During the restoration process, in which the theater now serves as the church’s sanctuary, one key element was to integrate the lighting, sound, and video controls into a central area. The sanctuary has been restored to its original splendor, with ornate ceilings and walls, but also updated to liven up the acoustics in a building built for concerts in an era when no sound or video systems existed.

The main mixing booth is set directly in the middle of the sanctuary, partly below the balcony overhang, commanding a good view of both the main stage and choir, as well as of the musicians, located off to the left near the front. If it looks similar to a front-of-house sound booth in this picture (taken before the service, since no recording or still images are allowed during the actual service) you’re not far off.

It’s probably more akin to a combination of a front-of-house booth and a theater lighting booth, as all main controls for lighting and sound are done in this booth. Kudos, though, to the architectural firm and AV integrators, for pulling off a large booth in the middle of a venue that doesn’t look out of place.

Besides showcasing the full audio experience of the Tabernacle’s 250-voice gospel choir with a robust sound system, the media team also needed full view of the sanctuary’s front and left sides.

The musicians have their own dedicated discrete recording and mixing. This is key so that the music can be recorded in a multi-channel discrete format for later mixdown against the choir audio, but also to allow the musicians’ aggregate feed to be sent to the main soundboard. The main soundboard also has a feed from an iMac, running iTunes, to feed in key audio effects and songs. While I don’t know this for certain, the use of the iMac/iTunes combo could also be a fallback plan in case the musicians’ sound feed were to falter, since many of the songs sung in the services have also been previously recorded by the choir.

In addition, the media team also operates a number of cameras and projection displays that make video and computer graphics images accessible to any of the 3200 people that attend each of the three Sunday services.

The camera heads, one of which can be seen in the center of the picture are remotely controlled and positioned throughout the sanctuary. Some are on thin poles and have integrated pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) heads while others are wall-mounted cameras with longer lenses and external PTZ controls.

Video and graphics are mixed together and displayed on one main projection screen at the front of the sanctuary, plus on additional ceiling mounted screens in the main-floor area below the balcony. All signals are in 4:3 aspect ratio and video graphics appear to be downscaled to TV quality for easy mixing with the live video feeds, both of which are typical of systems put in during the early 2000s.

In use, the whole system was a delight to see and hear. The three women in the main booth at the noon service I attended were on top of the transitions from song to minister and back to song again. With that many people singing in unison, from the choir to the congregants, the noise level can become extreme and it’s easy to run the mixing console to a level that creates distortion in the speaker output. Yet I can honestly say is the highest I’ve ever seen a VU meter peak without distortion, thanks to very good mic placement, adroit mixing and a very good amp/speaker combination. I’ll try to get some details on the latter to note in an update to this blog post.

The only big surprise for me was that the Brooklyn Tabernacle does not offer a streaming or progressive-download version of its services. While many churches have gone from offering audio-only streams to video streams, the Tabernacle still only offers sermon and service archives in audio form, either to stream or to purchase as a download. Here’s hoping the impressive events that occur within the old Metropolitan Theater, and are captured with a decent live production setup, can soon be shared with a larger audience via streaming.

Tim Siglin (tims [at] braintrustdigital.com) is chairman of Braintrust Digital, a digital media production company specializing in training, corporate communication, government, historical preservation, documentary, and business marketing and development. He is a contributing editor to EventDV and Streaming Media.