With ‘Liverty’ and Justice for All

I was remarking to myself the other day (this happens often, believe it or not) about just how much graphics-technology has changed in my own lifetime.

From my humble beginnings with an 8-bit Atari 2600 (I’m pretty sure I could still beat anyone at Centipede) and then ‘graduating’ to playing GoldenEye on the 64-bit Nintendo system, the graphic-ability of even the gaming consoles of my life has been ever-changing right before my eyes. I’m not even sure how many ‘bits’ are within our family’s Wii these days.

The same is true with computer graphics. I remember being pretty excited playing on the Mac computers in the computer lab of my Junior High School and manipulating basic shapes into some sort of a clickable ‘game’ with my friends during Computer Club (yep, I was that guy).

These days the “Computer Graphics Industry” has advanced beyond what I can even imagine. Think about it yourself next time you’re watching television and a majority of what we see now is aided by computer graphics.

A couple of years ago I upgraded my “graphics suite” of software to Adobe CS4 and I’ve become familiar and comfortable within the programs of Illustrator and Photoshop. Also in this suite of software are some video and graphics-manipulating programs that make me quite nervous. I’ve been editing my latest videos quickly within Adobe Premier, but have been nervous to dig any deeper than I’ve needed to with basic editing all I’ve approached thus far.

This week I dug out a piece of green cloth I saved from the dumpster one afternoon and brought it home with me. I also ‘hired’ a 6-year-old assistant to recite the Pledge of Allegiance after a day of school and I filmed her in front of my make-shift ‘green screen’ with my HD camera.

It was her idea to put a flag behind her when I suggested the idea on the way home from school. (she’s already a creative genius)

I really don’t know what I’m doing. I watch enough YouTube tutorials to get by and I’m scared I’ll break something every time I tweak a setting within the software, but what I came up with is what I’m hoping is a first-step into doing more with video in the future. I want to know and learn enough to ‘be dangerous’ and do fun things like put waving flags behind my kids as they say, “…with liverty and justice for all…”

Behold, my first green-screen attempt: