Harry Caskey never imagined that the talent he had displayed in fifth-grade art class at Mann Elementary School would lead him to the marquee assignment of programming the big-screen display at Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Downtown.
Martha Rial, Post-GazetteHarry Caskey, in front of the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts' 30-by-21-foot Panasonic Astrovision screen that he programs featuring the artwork of classmates.
Click photo for larger image.
A childhood friend was peering over Caskey's arm while he drew a picture in the Mann art class. His friend thought the picture was good and told Caskey to show their teacher. The teacher agreed and suggested he attend Rogers Creative and Performing Arts Middle School.
Now halfway through his senior year at the high school, Caskey, 18, of Brighton Heights, has studied ceramics, sculpture, painting and digital photography in addition to his academic courses, among which math and science are his favorites.
He's using his artistic eye and technical know-how to produce several 3 1/2-minute videos for the 30-by-21-foot Panasonic Astrovision screen on the Fort Duquesne Boulevard side of the new high school.
"It was pretty simple, actually," Caskey said, while sitting among 22 G-4 Macintosh computers with 20-inch flat screen monitors in the school's electronic media lab. "Once you make the video, it's pretty simple to put it on the [display screen]. Making the video's the hardest part."
Caskey's first video appeared on the display at the beginning of the school year. It was dubbed the "We Are" project and featured still shots of self-portraits by CAPA students. The project showcased some of the students' personal work and created a personality for the school that reached beyond the physical building.
Art skills and imagination come into play throughout the video process, but are most evident in the planning and final editing stages, Caskey said.
"First you have to come up with an idea," he said. "Then you have to get a video camera or still camera and start to shoot. Once you get all that information, you have to organize it. Editing, effects, contrast, video editing -- rendering the video takes a long time.
"Once you make a video, you have to decide if it's good or not. That's when you use artistic judgment. It takes over the whole process."
Caskey is not an old hand at video editing. He picked up the skill last summer while attending a workshop at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, where he learned to use computer software designed for editing and imaging.
When he returned to school, Caskey was tapped by one of his longtime teachers, Dennis Childers, to work on the new video display for the high school.
Childers, an instructor at CAPA for 18 years, has known Caskey since he was a freshman at the school, which used to be in Homewood. Childers, a sculptor and photographer as well as a video arts teacher, identified Caskey and another student from the student body of 430.
"I found two students I knew who could pick it up very quickly," Childers said. "You always get a sense of the students who really know the programs. It's like second nature to them."
When Caskey graduates in June, Jolie Peters, 14, a freshman, will take over.
Caskey started working on the "We Are" video a week before the start of the school year. He worked on it at home with his laptop computer and at CAPA in the media lab.
"I was the first student to come into the lab and was amazed at what we have here. I was handling a $6,000 camera on the first day," he said. "The first day I came home from using this equipment, I told my mom that I use the same camera they use on 'Oprah.' "
While excited by the cutting-edge technology, Caskey admitted that the video projects can be overwhelming.
"The only drawback I have is it's time-consuming," he said. "I had so many other things going on. It just gets overwhelming. It takes a toll. You have to have a lot of patience."
In addition to the video projects -- he aims to complete one to three videos a month for the remainder of the school year -- Caskey has a part-time job, operates a personal business as a computer specialist and earns A's or B's in all of his classes.
New videos are put in rotation every three weeks. They are visible all day except from 3 to 6 a.m., when the screen is programmed to shut off.
In July, the city's zoning board received complaints that the brightly illuminated screen violated restrictions on Downtown signs. Since then, Pittsburgh Public Schools has received several temporary waivers to operate it, and school officials hope to get a permanent permit in the coming weeks.
Caskey said he wanted to remain in the Pittsburgh area to attend college and has applied to several schools in the region. He said he wants to infuse languages into a future career. He studies four foreign languages either in school or in at-home lessons.
For now, Caskey is savoring his accomplishments.
"It feels good," he said. "It's like, 'Yeah, I did that.' Where else in the entire world does a high school student get to step up and produce a video that's shown on a big screen display?"
First Published: December 23, 2003, 5:00 a.m.