When buying a car, visuals matter—especially video. High-quality shots of both the exterior and interior help attract buyers and increase sales. Details like the dashboard, seats, and steering wheel, body, headlights etc. are key touchpoints, so capturing them through effective videography is essential. However, car interior videography is not just about hitting “record”, different aspects like lighting, angles, and smooth transitions make all the difference. With 63% of car buyers influenced by visuals, a well-crafted video of the car’s interior can make or break a sale.
Ready to elevate your videography game? Here’s a complete guide to capturing pro-level interior car videos.
What Is Car Interior Videography?
Car interior videography is the act of capturing the essential details inside a vehicle, such as seats, dashboard, steering wheel, center console, and more. Showcasing the car’s interior is crucial because it’s where buyers will spend most of their time, and its condition can strongly impact their buying decision. While minor exterior blemishes might be forgiven, poor-quality or damaged interiors can completely turn a buyer away. Interior photography needs more skill because it’s usually dark inside the car, making clicking studio-like effects difficult to achieve. Hence, there are many aspects that dealerships need to consider while filming their feet ‘ interiors, like lighting, color, reflections, and more.
Essential Gear for Car Interior Videography
Regarding car interior videography, having the right car dealer video solutions equipment can make a lot of difference. The right tools will not just help you highlight the obvious parts but also enable you to become creative with angles and capture the car at its best. It also helps to handle challenges well, including cramped spaces and lighting issues. Here is the equipment that will get you started:
1) Camera: If you find a DSLR, then great. If not, then a mirrorless camera with good low-light performance will work. A camera would help you capture perfect pictures with details in dim lighting.
2) Wide-Angle Lens: A wide-angle lens, preferably 16-35mm will help the dealership capture the full interior, from the dashboard to seats. A wide-angle lens also minimizes distortion and gives viewers a more comprehensive view of the cabin.
3) Gimbal: Also called a stabilizer, a gimbal ensures smooth and stable footage, eliminating any shaking pictures and videos when moving through the interior.
4) Lighting Kit: Lighting is a major challenge in interior photography so make sure to have portable LED lights to remove shadows and dark spaces.
5) Microphone: A good microphone is an investment for a big car fleet as it helps to build better audio and capture dialogues without any disturbances.
6) Tripod: An adjustable tripod, is a great thing to have if you are consistently making car interior videos as it produces stable shots in confined spaces, ensuring consistent framing.
7) Suction Mount: For dynamic shots while driving, a suction mount successfully holds the camera on windows or dashboards.
While you can also use a phone camera to get started, having these tools will help you get decent shots and give you some room to become creative and build engaging videos.
Pro Tips for Capturing High-Impact Car Interior Videos
Now that the equipment part is sorted, you can start taking pictures of the car’s interior. But don’t just jump the camera trigger and get on with it because here are some techniques you should know to enhance your car interior videography:
Pre-Production Planning
Before any kind of shoot, there should be a certain amount of planning that needs to be done. It includes things you want to capture, features, areas etc. It’s always helpful to build a storyboard beforehand to determine the flow of your shoot.
Use Natural Light
Flash though used consistently is not required on certain occasions. Your natural light is the ultimate illuminator for your interior. It’s always advised to take your pictures during the golden hour—early morning or late afternoon. This creates a warm, inviting atmosphere inside the car, enhancing the visual appeal.
Create Depth with Layers
Always use the car foreground elements, like as a passenger’s arm or an accessory, to create depth in your shots. This technique helps buyers gain a better immersive experience.
Experiment with Reflections
Reflections are considered negative for most parts, but it also be used during interior photography. Reflection through mirrors or reflections when used tastefully can make the videos/pictures more aesthetic and pleasing to the buyer.
Dynamic Movement
Moving your camera smoothly along with your interior to take the cider shots is a good way to be creative. While it can be tricky for amateurs, this technique adds energy and engages viewers, simulating the experience of riding in the car.
Use Sound Design
Sound engineers can help identify sounds like clicks, the sound of an engine, etc. that are pleasing to the buyers. These sounds can be added to vehicle videos to make the video stand out and get the viewers hooked.
With these techniques, you can create captivating car interior videos that effectively showcase the vehicle’s features and ambiance.
Editing Car Interior Videos
After you are done with the raw shoot, capturing a car’s interiors from different angles you now need to focus on car video editing. It’s only in the editing phase that the pictures and videos from your shoot will make sense. Without proper editing, they are just random clips with no meaning, story, or buying appeal. While a professional video editor can help you out, a lot of times, there are gaps between your vision and their understanding of your vision. Fortunately, many automated car videography tools like Spyne make both the shoot and editing part for dealerships easier to perform so that they can perform these tasks on their own.
Creative Ideas for Car Interior Videos That Resonate with Buyers
No one likes a boring video. A car can be splendid from the inside, but it won’t amount to anything if it’s not captured correctly. Here are some interior design ideas before you kick start the car interior photography.
Shots from a first-person perspective: Try filming the interior from a first-person perspective, highlighting the steering wheel, dash seats, windshield, etc. This POV gives buyers an impression of sitting in the car and experiencing things first-hand.
Dynamic Lighting: Try out different lighting like morning, night or the golden hour. Each one has its benefits while soft and warm lights show the cosy side, harsher lights give out details while night shots give an idea of the ambient lights in the car and features.
Close-ups: Details matter. Focus on the finer things that elevate the car’s design, stitching on the seats, textures of the dashboard, chrome or piano black finish, etc. giving a premium look.
Storytelling: Sometimes, you need to break the usual set pattern of car videography. Go creative by using props like coffee cups, hanging out with friends, shopping and try building a storyline around your car. This gives your video and car a relatable touch.
Overcoming Challenges in Car Interior Videography
Car interior videography is not easy. It presents multiple challenges, especially when it comes to manoeuvring cameras in tight spaces and complex lighting conditions. Limited spacing restricts the cameraman’s ability to move and try different angles. Using wide-angle lenses can help, but they risk distorting the interior.
Light is another major challenge because car interiors often lack sufficient natural light. Hence, there is always a need for artificial lighting and the need to manage shadows as well, which can be tricky.
Unnecessary reflections are another issue that can disrupt many shots. Reflections from shiny surfaces, windows, and chrome elements often make taking videos difficult. It’s always advised to use polarising shots to reduce these unwanted reflections.
Finally, getting the right focus in a closed space like a car interior is also very difficult, especially when you want to capture multiple elements. There’s also the challenge of maintaining the appropriate depth of field, especially when you want to focus on multiple elements at once. Adjusting the depth of field with manual settings is key.
Additionally capturing clear audio is also very crucial for a video. Audio inside a car can be a little tricky to capture due to external noises and limited microphone placement. Here, using high-quality mics can isolate sound and improve audio clarity.
Interior Videos as the Ultimate Automotive Video Marketing Tool
If you are someone intimidated by the thought of taking videos, lights, editing etc. then we have something perfect for you. By leveraging the help of state-of-the-art, in-built, and zero-effort AI automotive video marketing capabilities like Spyne, you can create high-quality studio-like car interior images and videos. With Spyne you get:
- Accurate light and brightness along with an on-screen guide.
- An overlay sketch that helps you capture all relevant details from an accurate distance.
- A whopping 100+ background options for your car images.
- Ability to build customised backgrounds with one tap.
- Saved time and costs involved in editing costs through automated editing, processing hundreds of images at one go!
- Well, all of this is not just for the interior, you can shoot high-quality car exterior videos as well, along with a complete 360-degree spin view.
Conclusion
While car exteriors might garner more eyeballs on the web, car interior is an integral part that cannot be overlooked. It is something that can make or break a deal. The above guide along with an AI-based tool like Sypne AI app will help you become perfect with car interior videography and click high-quality and lead-converting car inside images and win more hearts.
  
