An Oral History of Morphing in Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’
Before Pacific Data Images (PDI) was bought by DreamWorks and became one of the powerhouses of CG animation with Antz and then Shrek, it was affectionately known as ‘the morphing house.’ That reputation was firmly established with the studio’s work on the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Black or White”, which celebrates its 25th anniversary today.
In interviews with several key artists involved in the famous face transitions seen in the video, Cartoon Brew revisits how PDI’s morphing tech came to be, how it was used on “Black or White”, and how it launched an era of overuse of the visual effect.
Jamie Dixon (visual effects supervisor, PDI): We got a call from Propaganda Films and they said they were doing this Michael Jackson project directed by John Landis, and in it they were trying to show that all races are the same and that people are fundamentally the same. And they had this sequence where there were going to be a bunch of faces that are transitioning from one to the other. We’d done that work before. That was morphing.
Tim Clawson (head of production, Propaganda Films): It was the first song off the new album from Michael. He hired us to do all the music videos from that album. Actually, with Michael you could never say ‘music video,’ you had to say ‘short film.’
