Vince Foster:
The Light Fantastic
Vince Foster is one of the biggest names in the lighting industry, but these days his job spec stretches far beyond straightforward lighting design and into the realm of computer graphics and video. An ardent Apple fan and long-time Mac user, key tools in his armoury include Apple’s award-winning Motion and Final Cut Express software packages.
“Lighting is a poetic medium in which to work”, explains Vince Foster. “Light itself has a myriad of lyrical associations, and the physical nature of light-objects gives them great potency”.
Things have changed a great deal since a wide-eyed Vince Foster first started out in lighting within the entertainment industry. By his own admission, the 16-year-old Foster literally pestered his way into his first job after the combined effect of lights, lasers, smoke and moving mirrors at a Genesis concert at Knebworth in the 1970s left him “gobsmacked”. He has since worked his way to the very top of his profession, which is not merely a measure of his dedication and his vast — and still broadening — skill-set, but is also an indicator of the profound impact technology has had on the lighting industry in the past two decades.
Back in the 1970s lighting technology was at a minimum — in fact, all a light could do was turn on and off. Foster says: “You could also put a coloured gel in front of it, to create banks of blue or banks of red, for example, but that was pretty much it”.
“The job is changing all the time and these changes are very much bound up with the technology I use.”
Now, technology is central to Foster’s work. He’s the proud owner of a tranche of hardware and software that he uses for both design and presentation. He has a PowerBook G4 with 1.5GB RAM for use on the road, and a home setup comprising a dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. He also uses a wide range of software including Nemetsheck’s 2D and 3D CAD staple, VectorWorks, and ACD Systems’ technical illustration tool, Canvas, as well as Apple’s Motion and Final Cut Express. He also makes extensive use of several other Apple software packages, including Logic Express, iTunes and iMovie.
Foster’s big break came when he worked as lighting designer on a 1993 Erasure tour. Since then, he’s designed for the likes of R.E.M., Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, Phil Collins, Steps, Jamiroquai, Travis, Basement Jaxx and Kylie Minogue — including her recent Showgirl tour which boasted a massive 250-plus ‘intelligent’ lights, all with their own processors controlled, via hubs, from Foster’s lighting console.
His philosophy is simple. “I like to create good-looking things for my clients and I like to create them on something that looks good. Apple does not compromise on its software just because it’s hardware looks good. I find so often in innovation one is compromised for the other”.
He’s been designing on computers since 1991 and says: “It makes the design process so much more accurate. I can create a box with particular dimensions and then design in it and be confident it will fit the arena I’m designing for. You can be a few millimetres out and that’s OK, but previously, when designs were hand-drawn, you could be feet out and that would be disastrous”.
“[iTunes] has quite literally revolutionised the way I work... Previously. I used to have to carry loads of CDs and a ghettoblaster everywhere.”
He adds: “Once I’ve drawn the design on a computer, I can go back and edit it so easily. Previously you had to re-draw designs or tippex them out. Now you can make changes quickly and easily, which is crucial in this business”.
Foster makes extensive use of Apple’s Motion graphics package. He notes: “It’s particularly good at moving and manipulating text, which I do a lot of — for instance making it bigger and smaller, changing fonts and moving it around in real time. I used it a great deal with Massive Attack”.
iTunes is another important piece of Apple software in Foster’s workflow. He says: “It has quite literally revolutionised the way I work”. In the past, at the beginning of the design process, Foster would request the necessary songs from the relevant artist’s record company. He says: “I’d get sent every CD they’d ever made and I’d spend ages loading and re-loading songs to get them in the right order. Now, I simply access the iTunes Store, download the songs I need and create a playlist in iTunes. Previously. I used to have to carry loads of CDs and a ghettoblaster everywhere!”
He adds: “The scrub facility in iTunes is just brilliant because I need to shift backwards and forwards in a song all the time”.
Vince is also enamoured with Logic Express, which he used to great effect during preparations for Kylie Minogue’s “Showgirl” tour. He explains: “At the rehearsals, I got the sound guy to download everything from the desk onto an 80GB hard drive that I took home with me. I was able to download the files onto my home computer and start working with them. I could actually see the waveform, which is really helpful for design purposes, given that the sound and lights need to be perfectly in-sync. I also make use of the Timecode feature”.
“Low-voltage LED batons and screens can be placed next to each other to form a backdrop, or we can use LED backcloths”, explains Foster. “Then we project light in the form of data onto these batons, or use computer generated graphics or video footage”.
However, arguably the biggest revolution that Foster has witnessed — one that mirrors developments in the industry at large — has been the widespread adoption of desktop video. And Foster’s tool of choice is Apple’s Final Cut Express. He says: “LED technology is the current big thing in lighting design. Low-voltage LED batons and screens can be placed next to each other to form a backdrop, or we can use LED backcloths. Then we project light in the form of data onto these batons, or use computer generated graphics or even video footage”.
As a result of this development, Foster now uses a particle generator to create, for example, fire and water effects, as well as shooting his own video footage — all edited in Final Cut Express. The footage is played back from his Power Mac G5 during the live show and controlled from the lighting console.
Foster concludes: “These days I describe myself as a filmmaker as well as a lighting designer — I’m someone who creates videos. The job is changing all the time and these changes are very much bound up with the technology I use”.
