Ah, the magic of Hollywood...increasing people's expectations for decades. :-)
The fact is, they're right - the programs that Hollywood use do not exist in the real world. What they do is either take a really big picture and zoom it out, then play the clip backwards, or take two pictures: one zoomed out, and one zoomed in. Optical zoom is the only way to do this.
Darn it, lol. Well there goes my idea, lol.