Morph

One face becomes another without a cut and without the framing moving. The eyes stay where the eyes were, the mouth arrives where the mouth was, and a person turns into a different person.

Holding the frame still is what makes it land. The audience has a fixed reference, so every change reads as a change in the subject rather than a change in the camera.

Both ends are shot at the same size, the same angle and the same lens, with the features landing in the same part of frame. Aligning the eyes is usually enough to align everything else.

The features are paired one to one. Eye to eye, mouth corner to mouth corner, hairline to hairline, and the warp runs between those pairs while the colour cross-fades underneath it.

Light has to match at both ends or the morph carries a shadow that slides across the face in the middle. A flat, even key on both is the easiest way to avoid it.

Use it for a run of faces that are meant to be read as one idea, for a disguise coming off, and for the passage of years over a single portrait.

Skip it if the framing has to change. A size or angle difference between the two ends drags the whole face across the frame during the morph, as the note says.

A dissolve overlays two faces and both stay recognisable through the middle, which is why a dissolve between two people reads as two people. A morph keeps one face at every moment.

The test is the middle frame. If you can name both people in it, it is a dissolve. If you can name neither, it is a morph.

The Black or White music video (1991) ends with a long run of faces turning into each other at matched framing, which is the sequence that made face morphing widely known.

The framing shifts between the two ends and the face slides sideways through the change. Say matched framing throughout and name the size, so both ends arrive at the same crop.

The second failure is a cross fade with two sets of eyes. Say features flow from one face to the other with no cut and no dissolve.