This tutorial assumes you have Premiere Pro installed on your system. Let’s learn a step by step process on how to get a cinematic film look with bars in Premiere Pro.

Let’s say you have already completed your movie, short film or video successfully. Polishing is the only thing left.

Adding an Adjustment Layer

Step 1: The first thing you gotta do is create a new adjustment layer. You could do so by clicking on the following button labeled as “New Item”:

This will create a new adjustment layer in your project.

Step 2: Just drag and drop the created adjustment layer in the newly created video track.

Step 3: Drag the adjustment layer across all your video frames where you wish to see the cinematic film look of widescreen bars.

Adding the Crop Effect

Step 4: Time to add the crop effect now. Go to Effects Panel which might be available where your project panel is.

Step 5: Click on the Search box and then type “Crop”. If you fail to find the option it will be located in Video Effects > Transform folder

Step 6:  Just drag and drop this crop effect on the Adjustment Layer you had just planted on the timeline.

Adjusting the Effect Controls

Once you are done dragging and dropping the crop video effect, it is time to start making some effect controls adjustment.

Step 7: Click on the adjustment layer and then on the Effect Controls panel which might be available in your source window.

Navigate to the part that says Crop. Underneath it, you will have Left, Top, Right and Bottom buttons. If you start providing values here it will begin to crop your video based on the values you provide. You can go ahead and experiment.

Step 8: Click on Top and enter 11, 12 or 13 whatever value you wish to add. Then click on Bottom and enter the same value you entered in Top textbox. You can refer the video screen in the right to observe the changes.

Step 9: Dance! That’s the most important step. You are done!

You can follow my video too