How to make your videos look and feel cinematic
Making your videos look and feel cinematic is no longer the preserve of big-budget Hollywood productions. Thanks to rapid advances in camera technology, editing software, and creative tools, content creators can now achieve stunning, film-like results, even on a smartphone!
In this guide, we’ll explore some key techniques that can help you to capture and transform footage into professional-looking, cinematic content.
Do you need to make your video look cinematic?
Before we go any further, it’s worth noting that not all video content should aspire to look cinematic. This aesthetic is not going to be necessary for tutorials, news updates, reaction videos, and live streams. This sort of footage tends to prioritise authenticity, speed, and clear communication over polished visuals. A simpler production style can therefore be more effective.
However, cinematic techniques can add significant value to content designed to entertain, inspire, or tell a story. Travel videos, documentaries, commercials, product showcases, and short films often benefit from a more cinematic approach. It can make all the difference, helping them stand out against the competing content as well as create a stronger emotional connection with viewers.
And the good news is that, with the right approach, creators of all skill levels can incorporate filmmaking and editing techniques to add cinematic impact to their work. Let’s take a look at some of the most effective ways to make your footage look and feel more cinematic.
1: Shoot in 24fps
While crystal-clear 60fps footage works brilliantly for many types of content, it doesn’t replicate the organic, analogue character associated with traditional film stock. For a truly cinematic look, we’re aiming to recreate the motion and texture audiences have come to expect from the big screen.
One of the easiest ways to achieve this is by shooting at 24 frames per second. For decades, 24fps has been the standard frame rate for filmmaking, producing the subtle motion blur and movement that give films their distinctive feel. If your footage has already been captured at a higher frame rate, you can recreate a similar effect during editing by applying a Posterise Time effect and reducing the frame rate to 24fps or even 18fps for a more stylised result.
2: Use a shallow depth of field
A shallow depth of field is one of the most effective ways to give your footage a cinematic look. By keeping your subject in sharp focus while softly blurring the background, you can draw the viewer’s attention exactly where you want it. This technique also helps create a greater sense of depth and visual separation within a shot.
Traditionally, a shallow depth of field is achieved using a wide aperture and an appropriate focal length, but many modern cameras and smartphones can now simulate the effect using software. On iPhones, for example, this feature is available through Portrait Mode.
3. Framing and composition
When setting up your shots, every frame should be carefully considered. There are several tried and tested compositional techniques that are commonly used in cinematography. Here are three that get used a lot by filmmakers:
The Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds divides the frame into a 3×3 grid and places key subjects along the lines or at their intersections. This creates a more balanced and visually engaging composition than simply placing everything in the centre of the frame.
Leading Lines
Leading lines use natural or man-made elements such as roads, paths, railings, or buildings to guide the viewer’s eye towards the subject. This technique helps create depth and draws attention to the most important part of the shot.
Symmetry
Symmetrical compositions place the subject in the centre of the frame with similar visual elements on either side. Often used by filmmakers to create striking, cinematic images, symmetry can convey balance, power, order, or even unease depending on the scene.
4. Master your lighting
Good lighting often has a far greater impact on image quality than an expensive camera. Cinematic lighting can help to add depth, mood, and dimension to a scene.
If you’re using natural light, then consider using a light reflector to focus the light onto the subject. If you need to use artificial lighting, try to create contrast and shape light to enhance the dynamic feel of the shots.
For more on lighting, check out this helpful guide.
5. Give movement to your shots
Purposeful sweeping camera movement can add energy, emotion, and excitement to shots. Use camera mounts to achieve the smooth, controlled pans. In professional filmmaking, sliders, dollies and gimbles are commonly used to set up and film shots.
As a humble content creator, a good quality tripod or entry-level gimbal can give surprisingly good results. And don’t be scared to get creative, adapting solutions. For example, why not try adapting a skateboard and a monopod? The key is to ensure movement serves the narrative and story rather than distracting from it.
6. Selecting the right lenses
Different lenses can dramatically change the look and feel of your footage. Using a camera with interchangeable lenses gives you the flexibility to capture a wider variety of shots. For example, a wide-angle lens creates a sense of scale, while telephoto lenses can help to compress backgrounds and isolate subjects.
For the highest quality footage, prime lenses are particularly popular due to their sharpness and wider apertures. The only drawback is that you can’t manually zoom a prime lens as they have a fixed focal length, which locks you into one perspective.
7. Use cinematic aspect ratios
This is one of the simplest ways to make your footage feel more cinematic. Most feature films use wider aspect ratios than standard video formats, so cropping your footage to a widescreen ratio such as 2.39:1 can instantly create a more film-like aesthetic.
The wider frame also gives you greater creative freedom when composing shots, helping to emphasise scale, create visual depth, and produce more dramatic imagery.
8. Edit with purpose and pacing
Now, let’s move on to editing and post-production. Fundamentally cinematic editing is primarily focused on storytelling. Unlike your standard YouTube/TikTok style of editing, aimed at short attention spans and reliant on flashy transitions, cinematic style editing is focused more on rhythm and flow.
It’s important to give significant moments room to breathe. By matching the editing pace to the emotion of a scene, you can significantly increase viewer engagement and sell the whole cinematic experience.
9. Use film stock emulation plugins and film grain overlays
Modern digital cameras now produce extremely clean, highly detailed images. While this level of clarity is ideal for showcasing something like an oil painting technique, it can sometimes feel a little too clinical when you’re aiming for a cinematic look.
Film stock emulation plugins are designed to recreate the colour response, contrast, and overall character of traditional celluloid. By applying an emulation to an adjustment or effect layer, you can instantly give your footage a more filmic quality.
Another common technique used to enhance the analogue feel of film is the addition of subtle film grain overlays. These introduce texture, warmth, and a more organic, cinematic aesthetic.
However, it’s important to consider where your video will most often be viewed when using grain. On smaller screens like smartphones, grain is usually barely noticeable. On larger displays, though, the same amount of grain can become much more visible and, in some cases, distracting.
10. Apply professional colour grading
Colour grading is the process of adjusting the colours, contrast, and tones of your footage to create a consistent visual style. It is one of the most effective ways to help establish mood, atmosphere and consistency throughout your project.
By applying different gradings, you can dramatically alter the feel of a project, ranging from warm, nostalgic tones through to a dramatic blockbuster look. By carefully grading your footage, you can transform ordinary, lifeless footage into something far more polished and emotionally impactful.
11. Carefully curate the music soundtrack
So now the visuals have been taken care of, it’s time to turn your attention to the audio. Music plays a huge role in shaping how audiences view and react to a scene. A carefully chosen soundtrack can help to emphasise excitement, tension, emotion, or inspiration. Curating a selection of music that works well together can also help tie your entire project together. Even simple visuals can feel far more cinematic when paired with the right music.
And if you’re looking for music that can transform great footage into a truly cinematic experience, we have you covered. At RouteNote Licensing, you can access our entire catalogue of high-quality royalty-free music with an unlimited-use subscription from just $4.99 per month.
12. Enhance your audio and sound design
It’s not just the music that is important to get right with the audio if you are selling a cinematic effect. Professional films rely heavily on sound design to create immersion. The use of ambient sounds can help to sell a scene. Foley effects, impacts, transitions, and subtle background details can add an extra dimension and bring scenes to life. Strong audio makes footage feel bigger, more realistic, and significantly more cinematic. And with huge libraries of stock sound effects and textures available, such as the one on RouteNote Licensing, there is no excuse not to create immersive cinematic soundscapes.
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