Morphing in After effects

Today I am testing how to morph one photograph to another using after effects. This is for the part in the story where the Mother character imagines the photograph of the US army officer in the Sydney Tribune turning into her husband as she remembers him and misses him. I found a simple tutorial about morphing and have set myself 2 hours to experiment.

The photo I am testing with is not of an Australian officer but I like the pose very much so I will later transpose his head and uniform with another face to become my character.

UK Airforce officer from WWII

The photo I want to use as the image in the news paper that reminds the Mother of her husband is by a Dutch photographer  from whom I need to get copyright permission to use this photo also.

After a couple of hours I have a test morph. It looks a bit made by a computer at the moment so it will take some more brain storming to achieve the look I want but this was a good exercise to learn how to make a simple morph with After Effects using the replace mask shape effect and the opacity levels.

It felt a little strange to paste out the US solidier out of the photo considering the controversial nature of there involvement in the war and transpose him with a British man from the 2nd World War. I am very conscious of the real life people's stories I am working with when making this film and I really don't want to offend anyone with my creative interpretation of this real life document.