We duplicated the effect of the dolly zoom, also known as the vertigo shot, by taking multiple still photos of the same scene with different focal lengths and distances from the subject, while keeping the size of the subject roughly the same. We simulated the effect of a video by stiching the still shots into an animated GIF. Most of the difficulty came from keeping the object at the same place for each shot without too much shaking; the use of a tripod would have improved this issue.
For these photos, we used a Sony A7II with the stock 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 lens.
Using the method described in Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir, we built a method for dynamically shrinking images by carving seams (either horizontal or vertical) across an image. We choose seams with the lowest total energy level to remove from the image until the image is at the desired size.
Below are a few examples of seam carving that worked fairly successfully, as well as some that were not as successful. For the most part, fine detail or straight lines were not well-maintained after seam carving, but relatively simple images worked fairly well.