Add a Black Bar to Create Your Cinematic Video in 2025

Liza Brown

Jan 15, 2025• Proven solutions

Skipping the flimflam, one of the most sought and effective technique is adding a black bar to the video. To name it better- it is known as a letterbox or the CinemaScope in movie production. If you are reading this, you are on a quest of making your videos more interesting and engaging, Right? It sounds dramatic but it is exactly what it says. The black bar on the top and bottom of any video will greatly help you create a cinematic video. 

Adding a black bar to the video helps to create a cinematic experience. The practical utility of it is that you can transfer the widescreen videos to standard-width video formats and keep the original aspect ratio of the film intact. Besides helping the video makers adapt to various screen resolutions, cinematic black bars have opened up a whole new pandora of creative opportunities for video marketers.

• The rough estimate of 10-13 % of the black area gives the footage a cinematic look
• You can repurpose any of your landscape videos into a square format.
• Social media loves these videos
• You can expect better engagement and increased views
• This video editing technique costs less.
• The black bars can help accommodate custom ratios for different platform.

You can also create your dream project and add a cinematic black bar to your video for a better artistic presentation. If you don’t know how to do it, try Wondershare Filmora and get the magic!

Part 1: Add a Black Bar with Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora is an easy to use video editing interface laced with all kinds of amazing video editing features such as video creation, color correction, green screen, transitions and effects, audio equalizer and much more. Now you can add a black bar to your video to make it more cinematic with Wondershare filmora in five easy steps.

Step 1: Launch Wondershare Filmora and Import Your Source Files

Start Filmora, and click on the File-Import Media option, and import your source files to the media library.

Step 2: Drag-n-Drop the Video to the Timeline and Add Subtitles

Once you import the source files to the media library, you can simply click on the thumbnail of the video and drag/drop it down to the timeline. Then go to the Titles tab, add any title you want to the timeline, and then right click it to select Advanced Edit.

Step 3: Enter the Advanced Edit Panel and Add Title Shapes

Now that you have chosen Advanced Edit from the menu that appears, a new window will pop up displaying options to customize the title. Remember our goal is to add a black bar to the video. So, if any sample text appears on the screen, you can click on it and delete it. From the top bar of this pop-up window choose the shapes icon, and select the rectangle shape.

Step 4: Custom the Title Shape to Create a Black Bar     

Add two rectangle shapes to the top and bottom of the video respectively. Then you can resize them manually to fit the length and width of the video frame to make sure the alignment of both the bars.

Then scroll down to the color option on the left. Change the color to black for both the bars to create the cinematic black bars. Click OK to save the changes.

Step 5: Share and Export the Project to Be a Video

After you finish adding the black bars, you can click on Export. Filmora gives you access to all the popular format options. That means you can convert your video in any format you like! You are good to go.

Part 2: Create a Cinematic Video with Filmora Effects

Wondershare Filmora is famous for its effects store Filmstock. We have enriched our library with all the amazing video effects, photos, royalty-free music, sound effects, stock footage and so much more. It is your all in one stop for all the video editing needs. After you add a black bar for your video, these resources are at your disposal and you can use them to make your video more cinematic and vivid. Filmstock is available in three cinematic packages.

1. Cinematic Pack

Filmora’s cinematic pack includes a total of twenty filters. You can apply all of these cinematic filters to your video after creating black bars. Access to Filmora’s cinematic pack will make your videos look more high-end and ready to hit the big screen.  Videos will look more spectacular and engrossing

2. Cinematic Light Pack

Filmora’s cinematic light pack includes 25 overlays. 35MM real film grain, organic grain, 8mm dirt fil grain, the superfine digital grain is just a few among many others that make your videos look clean, sophisticated, colorful and like worthy. These videos captivate the attention of the viewer and help you stand out on social media too.

3. Cinematic Beats Pack

Filmora’s cinematic beats pack includes six royalty-free songs. It caters to the section of videos where music adds to the message. You can add the cinematic beats song you like as the background music of your video, which will make the whole media experience more powerful and attractive.

Conclusion

It is more than easy to add a black bar and give a cinematic edge to your videos. The videos are going to look professionally done and more sophisticated. You can use Filmstock to enrich the video editing experience. Add filters, add music- The whole process is extremely easy. For a complete yet simple video editing experience, switch to Wondershare Filmora. You can download a free trial of Wondershare Filmora below and get started. There is no limit to its possibilities!

Liza Brown

Liza Brown is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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