1. A computer implemented method for generating a non-transient record embodying a measure of a location of a feature of a face of a person, the method comprising: a. receiving a video sequence that constitutes a physical record of the face of a specified individual person; b. applying a feature locator update model to the video sequence, the feature locator update model derived by steps of: i. defining a set of training data consisting of training images with associated facial feature locations; ii. generating a set of facial feature displacements for each training image with associated image sample vectors; and iii. training a regularized linear regression which maps from image sample vectors to displacement vectors, wherein the regularized linear regression is characterized by regularization that includes a spatial smoothness term within the shape-free sample space; and c. extracting a feature location, based on the feature update model, characterizing the location of the feature of the face of the specified individual person; and d. storing the feature location to the non-transient record.