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[Music]
Oh, hey guys!
[Cinecom's intro music]
Hey folks, Jordy here for cinecom.net and welcome to Copy Cat Friday,
a weekly series in which we recreate
effects from famous films and music videos.
Today we're having a look at the opening credits of the film ‘Limitless’.
It's an older film from 2011 but
that doesn't take away the incredible effect we see in the beginning.
And we're gonna recreate that infinite zoom today
and show you guys how it's done.
Now, there's gonna be a basic idea behind the effect and an advanced technique.
Both will be covered in this tutorial.
Unfortunately, guys, we weren't able to make a long example
of the advanced technique since Lorenzo is sick
and Yannick is in the hospital today.
And I have no idea what I'm doing here.
So give Lorenzo and Yannick some love in the comments below.
Now, let’s start with a quick moment to thank our sponsor Storyblocks Video.
It’s an online library driven by a strong community of filmmakers
that share high-quality stock clips up to 4k resolution.
there are also effects like transitions, lens flares, sparks, smoke and more.
Or maybe check out the After Effects templates
to create stunning visuals in seconds.
To start downloading unlimited video assets go ahead
and click that first link in the description below.
[Music]
For this effect we did some research
and I found out that the original makers from the effect
used a tripod set up with 3 RED cameras.
Well, we're also going to do that, but we're gonna do that later in the video.
Now we're gonna use photos.
And we're gonna do that so that everybody can participate.
The subject that we are photographing are long streets,
because we need distance for this effect.
We’re gonna start off with a tele lens,
because we found out this was much easier to frame the subject.
Then we're gonna move down to the medium lens
and then to the wide lens.
Now place your camera and start taking pictures.
[Music]
So the idea is that you take 3 pictures of a long street.
One is a wide-angle, then a medium and finally a zoomed in or tele shot.
Like Yannick said, this is not how they did it in the film ‘Limitless’.
The editing process will be exactly the same, though.
Only the shooting itself is a little bit different
which we'll get into by the end of the video.
Now the basic idea could theoretically be recreated inside Premiere Pro
and we were actually looking for a way to do it in there,
but it's such a big hassle that we had to create it inside After Effects.
What you want to do is start with your first wide shot in the bottom of your timeline.
On top of there goes your medium shot and finally the tele shot.
And this continues.
If you have multiple scenes,
you can place the pictures of your next locations on top of there as well.
But again, start with the wide angle, then to the normal lens and finally the long lens.
Once you got everything in your timeline you could disable all the layers
except for the bottom one, which is your starting shot.
Scale this clip so that it matches with the resolution of your composition.
You can then go ahead and enable the layer on top of that
and scale plus reposition so that it matches with the bottom layer.
If you have trouble matching it, you could set your opacity for a moment to 50%,
then when you got it in place bring it back to 100.
Since we're gonna have to match multiple of these layers together,
we’re gonna parent the bottom layer to the one on top using the Pick Whip tool.
Whenever I scale and reposition the medium shot now,
the wide-angle shot will just follow along.
And just like we started, we will now scale up this medium lens shot.
Some of you might be familiar with this technique
and that is because Andrew Kramer from Video Copilot
actually showed the same technique on an earth zoom effect.
It’s an older tutorial from him but still amazingly good.
I'm gonna leave a link to it in the description below.
So, Andrew, thank you so much for that inspiration.
Moving on, we are now going to enable the long lens shot
and scale plus reposition it on the medium lens shot.
When it sits in place you parent the layer below it.
Then scale the layer back up and continue this process.
And after three shots of the same location
you could place three new shots here of a different location if you like so,
again scale the clip to match it with the one below,
parent the bottom clip and scale back up.
Just keep doing this for as long as you want to,
or as many shots as you have, of course.
But when you're done with everything,
we’re going to have to define the point where we are going to zoom into.
To do that we are first going to select all of the layers except for the one on top.
Then take the Pick Whip tool and parent everything to the top layer.
We’re gonna use this layer as the animation controller,
but since we're going to zoom in from such a huge distance,
our anchor point has to be very precise.
So from the Options of your canvas locate the Grid and Guides button,
and enable the Title Safe Area.
And this will add a cross in the middle of your shot.
Now, using the Anchor Point tool
we can now move the anchor point of the top layer on the same spot as that cross.
You can scroll to zoom in to make sure that it sits perfectly in place.
All right, we can now go ahead and create our animation.
And since we're already sitting at that ending position,
I’m going to create a keyframe for the scale and place that keyframe further in time.
Then go back in time and change the scale value to 0.001.
And this is gonna depend on the amount of shots that you have,
so try a few values here until you see your first shot in full frame.
Now since we're crossing such a huge animation
which is gonna be linear by default,
you will notice that the start will go super fast.
So we're going to have to turn our animation into an exponential scale.
And you can do this by selecting both the keyframes,
right-click on them and then choose Keyframe Assistant: Exponential Scale.
After Effects will then create the exponential animation for you.
And this brings us to the last step,
while scrubbing through the animation we will still see the individual photos.
But to blend them better together we're going to mask them.
For example this layer right here.
You can double click on the rectangle mask tool to apply a mask on it.
From the mask options change the feather to around 300
and the mask expansion to -300
so that you definitely don't see the edges anymore.
Do this for all of the layers.
Some shots might require you to go to a landmark, such as this bridge.
What helps here is to disable your layer
but keep it selected while you're creating your mask.
Here you wanna mask around the inside of the bridge.
As a final touch you might want to color correct the individual photos,
if they don't match with their surrounding.
Now, I like to use this simple curves effect for that,
as it gives me great control over the contrast.
And that's it.
[Music]
Now let's also have a look at how you can do this with video.
Essentially you want to set up three cameras
very close to each other on a tripod.
One has a wide angle lens, the other one has a medium lens
and the last one a tele lens.
Simply record all of them together and, yeah, that's it.
So, instead of taking separate shots,
you’re doing it on the same moment now.
In post-production the process is gonna be exactly the same,
only here we're working with video clips.
And that was it again for Copy Cat Friday!
Thank you all so much for watching,
make sure to not only hit that subscribe button,
but also the bell next to it so that you stay notified whenever we upload new videos.
Thank you Storyblocks as well for support,
and as always:
Stay Creative!
-…a weekly series in which we recreate effects…
…that was Google.
Hey, Google, play the number one song.
I'm curious…
That appears to be the number one song currently.