I just remembered that I need to add black bars to my short film for that cinematic look, but I realized that it totally messes up your cinematography. It creates a problem with headspace. A lot of the details I wanted included in a shot are left out because of the black bars. Do people frame their shots with the black bars in mind or something? How do I get around this issue? Would appreciate any advice. Thanks.
shareFor your next project, if you want to be real cheap and not spend money on a monitor or anamorphic or anything, you can put your camera on a tripod and set it in front of a 16:9 TV. Line up the corners if the cameras's viewscreen, with the corners of the TV. Line them up exactly, so what you see through camera is the TV screen only, with no border of the screen showing at all.
Then pop in a DVD of a 2.35:1 movie and let it play. Then with the camera, lined up with the TV screen, take a photo of the movie. You will know have a photo with the black bars from the DVD movie on your cameras view screen. Using the black bars on the photo as a guide, put black tape over top of them, and line it up exactly when you do. So you should now have a 2.35:1 aspect ratio screen on your camera with the black tape, or at least really close, for cropping in post.