Animating Old Photographs: Bringing Movement Back to the Archive

An archival photograph is the most rewarding material for animation and the most temperamental at once. The effect of seeing it move is stronger than with any modern picture, but preparation takes longer than the processing itself.

The working order

Restoration first, animation second — never the reverse. Run animation on a scratched frame and the algorithm will take the scratch for a facial feature and drag it through every frame: you get a defect that twitches along with the head.

• Scan at maximum resolution, ideally from the original rather than a framed print
• Remove scratches, stains and creases
• Even out contrast without blowing the highlights
• Reduce grain carefully — carefully being the operative word; stripping it entirely makes skin look plastic
• Only then animate

Black-and-white frames

You can animate without colourising — movement reads regardless of colour. But if colourisation is planned, do it before animation: otherwise colour has to be applied to each frame separately and will inevitably drift.

Grain and softness

In film photographs the edge of the face is often softer than in digital ones. That is a property of the medium rather than a defect, and models usually cope. It is worse when a print was re-photographed with a phone at an angle: a double contour appears, which turns into jitter in motion.

A word on expectations

An animated archival portrait is not a recovery of how the person actually moved. It is a plausible reconstruction based on the statistics of movement in general. It restores a sense of presence, not the authentic expression of one particular human being.

This material is intended for adults over 18 and is informational in nature.