Our assignment this week was to choose a film and look at how the use of camera angles and techniques added meaning or lended emphasis to meanings in the film. I chose to look a the 2011 film “limitless” as i have seen it several times before and it has a distinct style and several motifs throughout the film.
For anyone that hasn’t seen the film, Limitless is an adaptation of the novel “The Dark Fields” by Irish author Alan Glyn. The film explores the notion that on a daily basis human beings only utilize a small portion of their brain capacity. If people were given the opportunity to use all of their mental functions (memory, logic, intelligence) to their full capacity the possibilities would be limitless.
Camera angles and other visual techniques are used to a large extent throughout the film to show the feeling of the character experiencing this mind altering drug.
FRACTUAL ZOOMS
This is a motif that appears throughout the film, this infinite zooms are used when the character is on the drug, often the character experiences loss of time and space and these infinite zooms in POV give this illusion.
OUT OF BODY SHOTS
Another motif that appears throughout the film are out-of-body shots included scenes of characters turning to see themselves repeating their own actions, like walking up stairs. There are scenes where you can see several versions of the character, this emphasis’s a fast forward in time and also the amount of things the character is able to do whilst on the drug.
FISHEYE VISION
Another motif that appears throughout the film and is when the character is “coming down” from the drug.
JUMP CUTTING SHOTS
Another type of effect involved slightly jump-cutting or altering shots, there are numerous scenes where the character has been filmed simultaneously from several different camera angles, these are then played together through transitions and morphed together, these isolates the character from the background, gives a sense of isolation and how the character feels internalised.
POV SHOTS
The opening scene of the film is actually a flash forward to the end of the film, the main character is perched on the edge of a sky scraper, the character announces what seems to be his imminent death, then there is a POV shot travelling all the way down the side of the building and to the street floor, as if the character has jumped.
The overall visual aesthetic on the film is that when Eddie is on the drug, things come into clearer focus and have more vibrant colours and have a more pristine feel to them.
Hallucination Rain 