We’ve all seen the videos before: Some adventurous soul took one picture each day for a year and turned it into a video. Whether it’s a guy growing an epic beard or a girl posing the same way for 15 months, the videos are fascinating to watch and quite popular as well. If only you could make one yourself.
Well if you were motivated, you probably could. Just put that tripod and camera in the living room, set a daily timer and get after it. Most of us aren’t motivated though — not for this type of project anyways — so we just watch the videos on YouTube and think about how cool it would be to make one of our own.
Everyday is out to change that idea. It’s a very simple app that reminds you to take a picture of yourself every day, then forms it into a movie. Now, there’s a bit more to it than just that, so let’s get into it after the break.
Motivation
Let’s get this question right out of the way before we begin: Why would you want to do this?
Think about what you did yesterday around 6 pm. Maybe you were sitting down to dinner with the wife and kids as usual. Or maybe you were out for dinner with a few buddies, having a drink or two. Possibly you were on a plane, ready to head to St. Louis on a business trip. Whatever it was, you were doing something at 6 pm yesterday, just like you’ll be doing something tomorrow at 6 pm. It’s a constant.
The first time you setup Everyday, you set guidelines for future images.
With Everyday, you take that little slice of life and capture it. By the time your video project is done you’ll have new memories to recall. To do this review, I took pictures everyday for 13 days. I figured I’d see if I could get through it, and if it was realistic to expect others to do the same. Today I look through those pics and I remember where I was at the time. “Oh look, there I was at the gas station.” ” Man, I wear a lot of white shirts.” These are all things that you may not remember or notice about yourself without the help of an app like Everyday. And even though the end result is a video that’s maybe a few seconds long, it’s the process that really makes this app fun.
How It Works
The key to an app like this is precision. You want to be sure that you’re framed up the exact same way in every picture, otherwise it just looks like a badly done montage. To make sure that happens, you start by taking your first picture, then aligning the guide with your various facial features. Take the time to get this right, because otherwise you’ll have problems lining yourself up later on.
Once you're aligned, the next time you take an image you'll see a ghosted version of your template for reference.
That’s not the only way that things are aligned, however. After the first shop, that image is used as reference for future images. It sits there, ghosted out in the background, so that you can align your head with the original version. Admittedly, this can throw you off, because not only are you manipulating the iPhone so your face aligns properly, but now you’re aligning your exact expression, which is tricky to duplicate. Fortunately, you can turn off the ghosted image — and the guides, too — by touching one of the two options in the lower right corner of the screen.
Getting In The Habit
There’s no way this app would work well without some kind of motivation, and fortunately, it’s all there. First on the list is a daily reminder. Set a time and a reminder frequency — daily, weekly or monthly — and you’ll get regular notifications from the app to remind you to take your shot for the day.
Make an appointment with Everyday.
The second method is via shaming. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr are all upload options, letting you upload your daily pic to each respective site every day. Should you have a large following, you might get reminders from your buddies should you miss a day or two here and there, shaming you into catching up. Admittedly, you’d have to be friends with a bunch of jerks for that to happen, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
The Video
Once some time has passed and you have a few shots in the system, make your video by clicking on the filmstrip in the top right corner of the screen. Choose your video speed, then generate the video. A few seconds later you’ll have a handy MP4 of yourself, ready to send to your camera roll. Click Here to see the quick video that I made so you can get an idea of the results you can expect.
Upload your pics to your favorite social media platform, and then make your video.
Verdict
I love the concept of Everyday. It forces me to do something that I’ve been wanting to do but putting off for years, and I think that it’s a pretty cool system. It’s not perfect though, so let’s hit the bad points.
This is a one-person app. Admittedly, if you’re using this on an iPhone it’s not that important to allow multiple users. But on an iPod Touch, it sure would be nice to allow multiple people to use the app. Also, there are no photo editing options. I don’t want anything like an Instagram-esque filter system, but it might be nice to add brightness or auto correct settings.
But that’s it. Everyday is easy to use, fun and cool to show your friends. It seems like a one trick pony, and it is, but that doesn’t make it any less cool. Plus, the longer you use it, the better the resulting video will be. Not too bad in my book.
