702.953.0471 | Las Vegas Event & Video Production 
Video Marketing & Black Bars
Our studio has used black bars on our videos for many years now. We did it for several reasons. First, we were trying to give a cinematic look and feel to our video productions. And second, it gave us some freedom and choices when it came to composing our shots in post production. As storytellers, this attribute was a differentiator and gave us a unique look in our space.
The image below shows you what black bars are — the black space above and below the video.
In today’s age of video production, and in this social media world, we have to look at all possibilities for getting our message to our audience. This battle for eyeballs has brought us to look at the black bars for delivering content. We have seen this video marketing trend develop this year, and we use it regularly.
Here are the key benefits we’ve seen for this trend.
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The black space does not interfere with the video content.
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Easy to create, high-contrast eye-catching content.
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Subtle and understated text looks clean and gives the viewer pertinent information.
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This is a great place for a logo/brand.
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Easy to add animated text to the black bars, creating even more dynamics.
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Creating a title that lives on your video.
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Delivering closed captioning.
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Delivering translation subtitles.
We have also seen the use of white bars as well, which seems to give a great visual flow when embedded into Facebook’s white space. The use of the white space is following the same key benefits, yet we are seeing bright colored text placed in the white space, as opposed to white on black. This seems to be a less than subtle approach to the black bars.
Because all video editing programs are capable of this easy task, adding bars is certainly something you should be considering. You can download the Black Bars here in 1080. Link: 1080 Black Bars
In the battle for the eyeballs, we need to take advantage of every possible branding and messaging opportunity we can. We believe this trend will follow us strongly into 2017, with new creative concepts for delivering content.