Jim Woodward has done everything from touring cross-country as a lighting technician to opening his own design company in Boston, Exhibit Logic, tackling 3D visualization, rendering, and modeling for concerts, theatrical events, film, television, corporate events, trade shows, museums, architectural firms, and retail stores. Now a senior entertainment product specialist at Vectorworks Spotlight, he will be teaching Braceworks for the first time at LDI2018 in his session “Vectorworks: Analyze Suspended Truss Loads with Braceworks - Beginner.” Live Design met with Woodward a few weeks out from the show.
1. How did you get involved in the software side of the entertainment design and technology industry?
On a tour in 1986 with Tait Towers, who was still doing lighting systems back then. We had a Commodore 64 as a color-scroller controller, and a local stagehand approached me and said, “I have this disk with a computer drafting program, and I don’t need it.” He let me have it, and I was spending a lot of days off sitting in the hotel room while all my colleagues were out having a good day off. I found myself making a par can symbol and cut and copied my way to a bar of six and then a row of 30 and then two rows, and in seconds, I had a Thomas pre-rig truss all drawn out. Before long, I found the text tool, and the rest just fell into place. As I started getting more into the corporate world, I moved through a few basic drawing programs and then in 1996, I found MiniCAD—the Vectorworks predecessor—and the rest is history. Scenic and total production design was now a breeze, and I got a lot of work because of the speed and efficiency of Vectorworks. A few other people were out there using CAD for 2D plots, but the way we moved into 3D with Vectorworks was a huge leap forward for our industry
2. What are the latest innovations in the software you will be teaching at LDI?
New improvements to Braceworks, the rigging analysis module for Vectorworks, and much more on rigging and stage design.
3. What software do you have in your personal toolkit?
Vectorworks with Braceworks and Vision, a little MS Office—that’s all I really need.
4. What is the best advice you ever got professionally?
Two things. First, never underestimate the opening act; you never know who your next client will be. And second, don’t look at a stagehand as just someone to mindlessly move your gear around. It took me a while early on to realize many of the local crew had my exciting new gig decades before I did, many with a lot less resources then. And if you treated them with a little respect, they could make life a lot easier, show you a few new tricks, and you’d make some new friends along the way. Many of these friends I still see and stay in touch with, and now I can share a few tricks with them in return.
5. What advice would you give to young designers/technicians entering the field today?
- Don’t let technology drive your design—make the most out of the gear you have. When you learn how to make a good show out of six steel par cans and a toggle switch board, it’s a piece of cake when you get some real gear.
- Don’t forget that having 400 movers and 17 universes of data and giving away your whole rig in the first three minutes of a show won’t leave you with much to make the audience go “wow” two hours later.
- Do remember what your audience just paid a lot of money to see, and it might not be the latest LED fixture 60' in the air. Keep them focused on what’s important.
- Don’t forget to say thanks at the end of the day to all those who helped your design come to life. (To all those who helped me, thank you for caring about the future of our industry).