Surreal timelapse shows the effects of aging

The slow, constant effects of aging creep up almost unseen in a short video posted this week by filmmaker Anthony Cerniello.

The video entitled "Danielle" begins with a little girl staring directly into the camera lens, making no movement except a few blinks. But then gradually, the girl's face begins to change. She grows, her neck lengthens, and within four minutes and twenty seconds, she has aged to an elderly woman.

"I attempted to create a person in order to emulate the aging process. The idea was that something is happening but you can't see it but you can feel it, like aging itself," the description says.

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The video's transitions create the effect of watching one person age over time, but Cerniello, whose other credits include commercials and music videos for Kings of Leon, told This is Colossal he built the video from portraits he took of a friend's relatives at a family reunion.

Using pictures of family members of various ages, Cerniello told This is Colossal he picked out the most similar faces, scanned their portraits and then worked with animators and a visual effects artist to morph them into what looks like one person.

"I wanted to make a person, I felt like I could tell a story with that, but it ended up feeling slightly robotic, like an android. I'm OK with that," Cerniello told This is Colossal.

Others have used artistic projects to document the passing of time, including Diego Golberg, whose collection includes family portraits from 1976 to 2013, and Noah Kalina, who took a self-portrait every day for 12 and a half years.