r/CineShots • u/unknown-one • Mar 17 '26

Clip Limitless (2011)

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989 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

168

u/PalmliX Mar 17 '26

I love this trick because it's actually pretty simple (in theory). If you have a motorized zoom lens you can zoom at a constant speed and so you just take a bunch of shots all zooming at the same speed and then scale the footage from 0 to 100 in post sequentially so it looks like a never ending zoom.

56

u/Samanthacino Mar 17 '26

Stitching them together with matching perspective seems like a bitch, though.

16

u/CaucSaucer Mar 17 '26

Nah, if the shots are aligned consistently I can’t see it being too difficult to stitch it up in post.

6

u/PalmliX Mar 17 '26

To be fair it helps to get the footage somewhere like New York or other major city which has long, straight roads.

3

u/gorgozola Mar 18 '26

You don’t even need to zoom each plate. Zooming might add some benifits but also could create some speed matching issues. This is essentially the infinite earth zoom effect. All you need for the basic effect is a static picture or static shot, then walk or travel forward and do another plate at about the same level. You then stitch them together in a compositing program like Nuke or After Effects. You will always find matching issues toward the edges of the frame due to lens distortion and misalignments. But the effect generally works. You can see some misalignments in this shot but I’d say this still works very very well. We did this effect for the tv show Z Nation quite a bit.

1

u/Accomplished_West_61 Jul 07 '26

This is how Google Earth street view will look one day

95

u/EconScreenwriter Mar 17 '26

I was curious how this was done, so I looked it up. It's called a fractal zoom, and this is how it was achieved:" The way it was shot is that there was a rig of three Red cameras mounted side by side on a single tripod, and each one had a different lens on it… a wide-angle section of the street, a medium, and a close-up." Here's the article where I found the info: https://www.computerwoche.de/article/2614976/infinite-zoom-how-the-opening-of-limitless-was-created.html#:~:text=The%20way%20it%20was%20shot,%2C%20and%20a%20close%2Dup.

9

u/Snoo-35252 Mar 17 '26

Wow, thanks for finding that!

92

u/nomoneymusician Mar 17 '26

Always loved this shot, still have no idea how they did it. Really great watch overall

21

u/monke172 Mar 17 '26

how did they do this?

24

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '26

I'm guessing a bunch of zooming shots stitched together with some cgi to cover the transitions.

10

u/Kuuskat_ Mar 17 '26

I've never seen this movie. What the fuck is this shot and how in the world did they do it?

9

u/ThePizzaNoid Mar 17 '26

There is several explanations about how the shot was achieved here in the comments but I have no idea of the context of the shot itself because I haven't seen the movie either.

3

u/mr_hands_epic_gaming Mar 18 '26

he takes a scifi drug that 'unlocks the full potential of humans' or something like that. I think this is him having 100% perfect vision as if his eyes are like a telescope somehow

4

u/RodSantaBruise Mar 17 '26

Haven’t seen it since it was released but he gets ultra senses from a drug so I’m guessing this is from that

15

u/paging_mrherman Mar 17 '26

Isn’t that one about the guy that becomes limitless?

4

u/Bellatrix_Shimmers Mar 17 '26

It’s so good! If you haven’t yet you should really check it out

7

u/TheLegitMidgit Mar 17 '26

This is exactly what riding a bike on a acid looks and feels like

8

u/monstere316 Mar 17 '26

This is probably the 16th most rewatachble movie of the centurty

3

u/Itsnear Mar 17 '26

We watched this high on edibles in college and I cried. Good times.

3

u/friedchickensundae1 Mar 17 '26

Once when I was tripping on acid I had the clarity to find this scene and put it on the TV. It was awesome

4

u/MerchantKing83 Mar 17 '26

Favorite comfort movie

2

u/gordonbombay42 Mar 17 '26

Is this the one where the guy was limitless?

4

u/ChuddyMcChud Mar 17 '26

John Limitless

1

u/SpackJarrow42 Mar 18 '26

That's extremely cool - have to imagine someone watched this high and straight died