Dance Boxes - Praise VBS

A few years ago we were doing the Praise VBS. We had just been to Dry Gulch for Kid’s Summer Camp. On their stage they had boxes that were clear (frosted) and were lit from within with colored lights. We loved how these looked and decided to do the same thing.

I ended up making boxes (the ones with the green Lights in them).   I started by building the frame out of 2X4 lumber. I made sure the boxes were strong enough to handle my weight since kids would be jumping up and down and dancing on them. You may have read in previous posts that I had an old drum shield that I had used for multiple plexi-glass pieces from. This was no exception.

I cut the pieces of plexiglass with my table saw. I needed pieces for the front/back/sides/top. I was also fairly nervous about the plexi not being strong enough for the top. I wanted the boxes to be plexi on top so the light would shine up on the kid on the box. But I didn’t want the Plexiglass to be clear (as it was). So I bought a can of frosting spray from a local crafts store. I used this to add a frosting layer to the inside of the boxes.

This turned out to be a pain in the rear. If I had it to do over, I would probably buy the frosted plexiglass from the start.

24" x 36" - 1/8" ( 0.118" ) DP9 - Two-Sided Frosted Finish- Clear SatinMatte Finish Acrylic Sheet

Once the boxes were constructed, I put 1 LED light in each one. The lights were connected to our DMX controller. We could control the lights in the boxes as well as the lights shining on the wall. We were able to get any variety of color and have rapidly changing colors…

You can see the boxes in action in a zoomed in photo:



 

Then here’s the overall photo that shows the entire stage. We had the two dance boxes, a DJ booth in the middle with two turntables (DJ Hero game turntables) which weren’t functions, just for looks. We ran 3 projectors. The 2 on the sides were connected to our ProPresenter system. The middle projector had a media device (old Microsoft Zune) connected to it and would only display the single logo image…



The funniest thing that happened during this entire process:   We put everything together Saturday night. We just worked around it for Sunday morning. Then after church on Sunday, one of the older people from church came up to me and said “That’s awesome, you made gogo boxes for the kids to dance on”. Didn’t really realize his sarcasm until he had already walked off…