Member Profile: Frank Foster
1. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
As my two photos indicate. From the 60’s to the 2020’s. My first analog film used a Spirograph in 1969. My career has focused on introducing digital technology into the creative based industries. This would include digital audio, MIDI, and Laser Visuals I have been often created to help popularize Previsualization of movie scenes. Our first one was “Striking Distance” with Bruce Wilis. The process started to gain acceptance when Jon de Bont directed “SPEED” to previz camera setups and for which I also did the titles. 1981 I ran the animation dept. At LASERMEDIA. I was CEO of a Music Software company called Hybrid Arts in the mid 80’s. I was the Director of Music Marketing at ATARI, before founding SONY Pictures IMAGEWORKS in 1991. While SPI was perhaps my most famous to date. Doing sustainability films are my current passion.
2. What was your first job?
I tried to get a job on TRON but I was just out of college and didn’t know anyone. I went to III and Robert Abel, but no luck. I went back to Seattle and got a job doing LASER shows. We would set up an inflatable dome on the Midway and I was literally a carny. I remember BETA testing the roller coasters soon as they passed the sandbag test. I later became the CG director at LASERMEDIA and designed LASER Shows for Earth, Wind, and Fire, Micheal Jackson and The Purple Rain tour for Prince. Also, outdoor shows like EPCOT center and Stone Mountain Park in Atlanta.
3. Where did you complete your formal education?
TESC, The Evergreen State College. I actually met a filmmaker at a Seattle conference named Homer Groening. He to told me his son also makes films and would be a freshman like me at EVERGREEN. Matt and I became close friends living in the dorms. Before email we continued to write letters to each other. After a while Matt decided to send the same letter to all of us and called it “Life in Hell’. (Life in LA). The LA reader newspaper adopted it as a comic strip. Jame L. Brooks saw it and the rest is “Simpsons” history. EVERGREEN was perfect for me. Because we checked media equipment out of the library like a book I was able to complete my first 16mm computer film “PHOSPHENES”>
4. How did you first get involved with ACM SIGGRAPH?
In 1973, Rick Speer and I directed The First International Computer Film Festival, as an Evergreen project .
We received over 200 16MM films. We had lectures by Ken Knolton, Lillian Swartz, John Whitney Sr. As well as films submitted by Gary Demos, John Whitney Jr., Nelson Max, Los Alamos, and many others’
5. What is your favorite memory of a SIGGRAPH conference?
Because my department was PC based, and SONY was about to release the VAIO computer. Lincoln Hu and I found ourselves as the SIGGRAPH guides for SONY President Idei-San. At that time there was very competitive recruiting at IMAGEWORKS and we were allowed to spend nearly a million dollars on an outdoor party. That evening as we escorted Idei-San back to his hotel, he looked out the window at the impressive Fireworks show. He turned to the back seat and asked “Are those SONY fireworks? I said “yes, sir those are SONY fireworks.”
6. Describe a project that you would like to share with the ACM SIGGRAPH community.
In the fall of 1983, I received an NDA from APPLE; after signing I opened a most unusual TV that had a cord attached to what we later learned was a mouse. It created a LASER smoke cone around a Mac that we dropped from the ceiling with a graphic image on the screen. The Mac was cleary visible through the LASER effect. After the theater emptied, Steve Jobs sees me packing up and says “You guys were f***ing great”. I thought he was talking to someone else but no one was on stage at the time.
7. If you could have dinner with one living or non-living person, who would it be and why?
Ivan Sutherland and discuss Sketchpad.
8. What is something most people don’t know about you?
That I was the official LASERIST of the 1984 Olympics Closing Cerimonies.
9. From which single individual have you learned the most in your life? What did they teach you?
Jean ‘Moebius” Giraud. He would know the perfect spot to place a pencil line and the black ink that followed rarely differed. He was patient and not bothered by people watching; One time I set up a Go Pro on a tripod to make a tie lapse of his technique. Unfortunately, was stolen by a Chinese production company.
10. Is there someone in particular who has influenced your decision to work with ACM SIGGRAPH?
Tom DeFanti. In 1975, I crashed at his house (On the waterbed, in the basement) I went to him for “SIGGRAPH type advice ever since.
11. What can you point to in your career as your proudest moment?
When as director I introduced SIGGRAPH’s feature film “The Story of
Computer Graphics” in a packed Shine Auditorium.