How to Make Automotive Videos

Decide Your Type

Before anything, figure out what you want to make videos about. It may seem like "I want to make car content" is a decision, but that's an incredibly broad idea. Are you interested in reviewing cars? Showing how to repair specific vehicles? Showing how to make repairs in general? Do you want to document your project car building journey? Perhaps you want to explain how parts work. Do you want to show what it's like driving your track car on various race tracks?

All of these sound like fun, and you may want to do more than one of them, all of them, or maybe even all that plus some other ideas! You can certainly do that, but be aware that this page is looking to help you find success making automotive content. A lot of your success is going to come from understanding your audience; not just who you're going to appeal to, but what they are going to want if they choose to subscribe and view what you're doing long term.

Consider the Cars Simplified YouTube Channel; while it certainly embodies the "Everything Automotive Explained" idea, the broad mix of content has a few side effects that some may consider unappealing. At the time this is being written, the channel has about 25,000 subscribers, but whenever a new video is released, it is very likely that the video will get about 100 views in the first 24 hours, and maybe 250 in the first week. Why are the views so low? Content creators like to jump to conclusions like "I've been secretly blacklisted!", "The algorithm is suppressing me!", or "The platform isn't pushing my videos to my viewers!", and perhaps on rare occasions, that does happen. Even an advanced platform like YouTube can make mistakes. However, in most cases, it's some degree of content/audience mismatch. On my channel, I have a lot of content that is being found in search every day, and I continually get subscribers from my videos about how to replace a battery in a key fob, talking about my GTO, or explaining what's in a fuse box. If the next video they see from the channel is "How to Replace a Control Arm on a 2018-2023 Subaru Crosstrek", it is probably beyond the scope of most people that just learned how to change a key fob battery, not interesting to Pontiac GTO enthusiasts, and too niche for the viewers of the fuse box video looking for generalized learning.

Also consider Tavarish on YouTube, who creates videos about restoring and improving interesting vehicles. Currently at about 2.75 million subscribers, his latest video views (with days since published in paranethsis) are at 1.6M (7 days ago), 1.4M (8 days ago), 1.4M (2 weeks ago), 1.6M (1 month ago), and 2.2M (1 month ago). He maintains this consistent great performance by making the content that people subscribe to his channel for, as well as keeping each video interesting to anyone that may discover his content for the first time.

Beginner Equipment

While it's true that production value has gone up on videos across all forms of social media over the years, that doesn't mean you need an expensive camera to make good videos. Most modern mobile phones have pretty decent cameras and microphones built into them, and many phones have cameras so good that they are used as a selling point for the phone.

In addition to video recording, your phone can also serve as a video editing program to some degree, especially for short-form content like YouTube Shorts. For some types of content, that's actually enough. If you make car show highlight clips, you go to the car show, record some footage, edit it together in an appealing way, and post it to your accounts. You don't even need to own a car or a computer! Still, other forms of content will require more equipment.

Items like lighting, tripods, editing software on a computer, and camera handles can be inexpensive ways to improve the quality of footage, but it's really important to give your content creation process a try before you buy a bunch of expensive equipment only to find out you don't actually want to produce videos.

In addition, even as you grow, you may not need the expensive stuff that you think you will. Take the channel 802 Garage for example: even with his channel reacing about 40,000 subscribers, Aaron continues to use a phone to record all of his videos.

DSLR/Mirrorless Camera

Cameras with interchangable lenses can create spectacular footage, but can have a learning curve to them, as well as the need to set things up just right every time you (or the subject) move to a new location/angle. If you need crisp footage or the ability to zoom in on something a great distance away, this may make a noteworthy improvement to your content, but a lot of creators can get by on a cell phone camera.

Tripod

Tripods hold a camera in place, often at a wide variety of heights, but that will depend on the design. A tripod can be a relatively inexpensive piece of gear that may be worth buying even when infrequently used. It is almost essential if you want to appear on camera beyond arm's reach and don't have someone to operate the camera for you.

Computer for Editing

Phones tend to be limited in their editing abilities, so a computer that can be used for editing may be worth getting. You may even already have a computer you can use, especially if you have a gaming computer. Most of the hardware that makes a computer good at processing video games also make a computer good at editing and rendering videos.

Plan Your Content

Having a plan for your content helps make sure the work you are about to do leads to a usable collection of footage.

For a car review, consider what someone might want out of one. If it's a new car, is the review about showing off a fancy car that few people can afford, or will a good chunk of the people looking for this review be considering purchasing one? For the latter, consider what someone might want out of that type of vehicle. Focusing on the 0-60 time of a minivan or the fuel efficiency of an 800 HP muscle car may appeal to a tiny percent of car enthusiasts, but may reduce how many people stick around to the end of the video for your final thoughts.

For a repair tutorial, are there any angles that you can prepare in order to make things very clear to the viewer? If you're not the first person to make a video on a given repair, it may be worth checking out the comments section of these other videos to see if there are any parts that viewers wished the creator had done/shown.

Tip: Don't Bother With an Intro Graphic

You've seen it before; you click on a video and there's a 30 second clip of the words "So-And-So Studios" moving around with a flashy background and some song blasting the whole time. Maybe you begrudgingly sit through it, or maybe you skip ahead. All of a sudden it's your turn to make videos, and you know better! Yours is going to be 20 seconds long, and have a much better song (you have much better taste in music, after all, and anyone hearing this 20 second clip of a song will know) at a more tasteful volume.

Don't do it!

Not only does no one care about the branding, it could very well drive away people entirely! If someone clicked on a video titled "How to Change Oil on a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix SE", they aren't looking for a song, a text graphic, or a buffer between the click and what they came for. They want to see what has to be done to change the oil in their car.

If you absolutely insist on adding branding at the beginning, consider making something that overlays the content but without covering up anything vital. In our recent example, perhaps you start out saying "Here's the car we are going to be working on today, and here's the engine it has.", you could have a logo and/or name in one of the corners of the video. Not only are you fulfilling the needs of the viewer by getting right into the content, the viewer is more likely to see it in a positive manner, rather than a frustrated one.

Get Content Out ASAP

Too many people wait for the ideal time to start their content creation journey, regardless of the niche/genre. Don't worry about release schedules or algorithm "hacks", just get some content out so people can start finding you. People can't like and share a video that doesn't exist.

Later on, if you focus on a subscriber audience, you can shift to a regular release schedule if you want, but even then, it's not necessary.

Tip: How to Mic a Car

A car can be tricky to rig up with audio equipment, because it is a small enclosed space with a lot of noise dampening items (seats, some dashboards, door trim, and more) and surfaces that reflect sound (glass, some ceilings, some dashboards). You may even want to hide the microphone(s) for what you're recording. The following video will show you how film producers hide and position microphones in cars.

Tip: Don't Join an MCN (Multi-Channel Network)

Multi-channel networks will likely come to you when you've made some promising moves on YouTube or when approaching you may seem like a sign that you "made it". While some of them are just looking to acquire access to your revenue so they can take a cut of it, some of them will offer legitimate benefits that make them difficult to turn down. Remember, they wouldn't exist in such vast numbers if they weren't a sucessful business model, and MCNs wouldn't be a successful business model if they didn't make money. Even ones that have special "prestige" platforms have to look after the survival of their business before any individual creator, or else they are putting all the creators at risk. In addition, watch out for other tactics like:

• "We actually aren't an MCN, we're a [different name]."
• "We have X number of views/subscribers across our network." (A large number of channels can join and rise this number to very high levels without the MCN doing anything to help them.)
• "We are creator owned." (The more creators are on board, the less influence you have over the direction of the business, assuming you even end up with voting shares of the company.)
• "We will lend you money." (What collateral are they going to need?)