原创 Morphing videos

Every now and again I think of an idea that's way ahead of its time. However, I don't have the resources or money or time to do anything about it. and then the world moves on and suddenly my idea is "old hat" and everyone is doing it.

So what was my idea? Well, way back in the mists of time – long before the Internet or digital cameras or even personal computers – one of my cousins had a baby and I thought it would be really cool to take a photograph of the kid each and every day in much the same position so that you would have a really details record of how they changed and developed.

Actually my idea was a bit more sophisticated than this, because my parents had an old 8 mm cine camera, so my thought was to take about 8 frames (which would equate to 1/2 second on a standard 8 mm camera) of each picture in order. Then, when we played the film back we would see my cousin's kid evolving before our eyes.

Of course we never ended up doing anything about this. Apart from the time and effort, we didn't have a lot of money back then and it would have cost a fortune to have all of those pictures developed.

How times have changed. Now with a digital camera it would be easy to snap a quick picture every day. And with the free video editing software available it would be easy to create a video showing a kid growing from a baby onwards. In fact I bet someone reading this blog has either had (or is soon to have) a baby – why not start this project now. Even if you stopped at 16 or 18 it would be a fantastic record ... but suppose the kid then kept this going for the rest of his or her life – wouldn't that be amazing?

I really wish I had such a record of my own life – but that's not going to happen unless I get back to work on my time machine.

Interestingly enough, it seems that many other folks have had related ideas. I was just wandering around YouTube (as is my wont) and I ran across the video snippets (links below). (You have to read the comments also ... for example, someone posted a comment on the video titled 800 Days—A Daily Photo Project saying "How long do you think it took to do this" and someone else replied "I would say 800 days but that's just a guess" [grin].)

Girl takes photo every day for 3.5 years
800 Days—A daily photo project
Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years
Girl takes photo every day for 3 years
Daily photo for 8 years

Now, one thing about all of these videos is that they simply flick from photo to photo. Do you remember the TV sitcom Roseanne? In later seasons, the background to the titles at the beginning of the program showed the various characters morphing from one "look" to another as they age throughout the years.

I'm not a big fan of Michael Jackson (he stole all of his best dance moves from me [grin]), but there was a great video when he morphed from character to character. I just did a search for it on YouTube. I didn't find it – but I did find the following which has made me really sad:
Morphing Michael Jackson

OK. I'm handing this over to you. Can you find some morphing videos on YouTube that will make me happy again?