Letterboxing on purpose

[ZephyrStar]

Do it :3

Just create your project in 2:1 aspect. If you need to add actual borders to bump it up to HD, you could do that, but just doing say a 1280x640 comp and using that for your video should be fine.

[godix]

You know, if I watch an AMV in full screen, or it gets projected at a con, then it is automatically letterboxed without the letterboxing being hard encoded.

Yes, this happened when i watched amvs in my old 4:3 screen... I guess you have a 4:3 one too?

No, I have 16:10 like most people. So even 16:9 vids will be letterboxed in fullscreen, although the borders are thin

[Phantasmagoriat]

I should probably note that there are a lot of other ways to achieve a cinematic look, but a wider aspect is still used in film because it works along the same lines as photographic Framing (in the sense that it emphasizes what's important in the shot; and you have more control over what's in the frame and what's not). Not only that, but the viewer really gets the sense that they are on the outside looking in, which reinforces the feeling of storytelling. So black bars on the top and bottom are very intentional, whether hard-encoded or not.

While most film tricks have already been [seamlessly] incorporated into the animation for you, I would still recommend googling for Cinematic Techniques, and try to steal ideas from Photography, Art and [believe it or not] ComicBooks/Anime/Manga Techniques as well. Even simple things like Rule of Thirds (amazingly useful for timing/sync), Negative Space (great for shifting attention), Minimalism (great for story telling) etc... can have a huge impact on the viewers perception of an AMV.

Perhaps I should note that I'm not really into the Arts, but I took an elective on Visual Literacy once, and it was effing awesome. Beware that learning stuff like this will change the way you look at things... and if you get hung up on all the details, your amv's will take ten times longer to make...

[Bauzi]

Do it.

I would go for letterboxes which would make my video look like a 20:11 (one cinema format) movie. Most people will probably watch it on a 16:10 or 16:9 display (beside con viewings and stuff) so 20:11 would still give it the illusion of a super wide cinema movie.

The rest: What Phantasmagoriat said. You could also try to recreate some shallow depth of field look and bookehs.