There’s often a stage where you find yourself making some very good videos: they’re technically well done, well cut, good color, transitions work, etc. And yet, it doesn’t quite look cinematic, somehow. The video just seems to have something missing.
Now, obviously, what you want to capture here is cinematic feel. There’s no cinematic preset, there’s no color look that’s going to magically make your videos look cinematic. The problem is not in the post-production or even the color. It’s more related to how you’ve set up your footage and how you’ve structured it.
It’s related to the pacing, the rhythm, the emotions you’re trying to evoke in the viewer as you go from one shot to the next.
Cinematic doesn’t mean complex
One of the biggest misperceptions of what cinematic means is to think that cinematic equals effects and drama and color grading and transitions. In my experience, most cinematic videos are simple, almost boring. They’ve been well thought out, carefully composed, and are paced very deliberately. They don’t jump around, they don’t rely on effects, they have purposeful movement or they’re static. They just seem more professional than your videos.
So why do you think the result doesn’t feel cinematic?
Your pacing is too uniform
There is never one rhythm when your videos are cinematic; there’s always a variety of rhythm, a variety of pacing. If you do the same thing every time, if every shot is the same length or every shot is the same rhythm, your videos will look like any other. It’s just like music, if you have the same tempo the whole time it’s just boring.
The pacing is something that you have to play with, something that you have to have fun with. If you have two shots back to back, one should be long and one should be short, or one should be held for some time and one should only last for a split second. And when that happens you get that variety, which is exactly what cinematic feels like. It’s not monotonous. It’s not flat in any way. There’s variety and contrast, and there’s emotion.
You’re not building atmosphere
This is something people often forget about with their edits: the atmosphere. Your edit should do much more than just show what’s happening or what location you’re shooting at. Your edit needs to make you feel what it feels like to be in that location.
You can achieve atmosphere in different ways, but the most important one is light, sound, color, still moments, etc. Atmosphere is not something that can be done on your camera. Atmosphere is something that you can only do in your edit and in your composition. If you forget about all of the atmosphere and everything that could make a video look cinematic, all you’re left with is a video that shows something, but it feels more like a documentation than a storytelling.
Camera movement feels random
A lot of people think movement will make their videos more cinematic, but movement can only be as impactful as its meaning. If it’s just some random shake in the camera or if the camera just randomly goes left or right then that won’t make your video look cinematic.
Camera movement needs to be controlled, and slow movement like a slow pan or a slow push in or even static shots can really be more effective than just constant movement just to have movement. You don’t want it just to move, you want to be purposeful and be very intentional in your movement. If there’s no point in the camera moving, let it stay static. It’s not about movement for the sake of it.
You’re ignoring negative space
One of the most crucial parts of a cinematic edit is the use of negative space. A lot of us make this mistake of using the whole frame. We think that if the frame is full of information, the video is somehow more cinematic. But in reality, this is the opposite: empty frames that use negative space are what look most cinematic, because it is a clear intention on purpose.
Final Thought
Cinematic editing is not about using all those elements. It’s about what you don’t use: it’s about doing less, but making it count.
So, don’t change your camera, don’t add a new color, don’t add some new transition; just work on what really matters for the video you’re creating, work on the pacing, work on the atmosphere, and simplify everything. Once you do that, your video will be cinematic.