If you’ve gotten your hands on a BMW that is in good condition, or one that you’ve restored to a good condition, you don’t want to keep all that beautiful German engineering to yourself. Filming your car is a great way to showcase your BMW, especially if you don’t have the time or the money to travel to car shows across the country. If you want to film your BMW, where should you start? Here are a few ideas, tips and tricks to help get you started.

Choose Your Angle

How do you want to shoot your car — from the inside as the driver or from the outside as a spectator? Depending on what you’re doing, the answer could be both, so you need to take both angles into account.

Are you planning on photoshopping or editing your video after you film it? If so, you need a camera that has digital capabilities so that you can upload the unfinished video to your computer for editing or finishing. This is useful if you’re shooting both inside and outside your car because it allows you to splice the video together into a finished product digitally.

Once you’ve figured out your angle, it’s time to start thinking about equipment.

Choose Your Weapon

Step two is to pick your weapon of choice. For professional — or professional-esque — videos, you’re going to need a camera, a microphone and some mounting equipment to hold your camera steady while you’re driving or filming from the outside.

A good roll bar mount for a GoPro, or other cameras can capture some fantastic images of the road as you drive, or your competitors if you take your BMW to the track. You can use these inside or outside the car, depending on where your roll bars go.

GoPro cameras are often the camera of choice for this sort of filming, but they’re expensive. You can create a decent video with a high-quality camera on a cell phone if you can hold it steady enough. If not, consider investing in a tripod.

Choose Your Location

Finally, choose your shooting location. Choose a place where no one will disturb you — unless you want to include the local color in your video. Think about your lighting — do you want to showcase your car in direct sunlight, indirect sunlight or even on a cloudy day.

Figure out what you want to do with your filming. Are you showcasing your car or showing off what it can do? That will determine the kind of location you choose for your shoot. You can shoot nearly anywhere as long as you have permission. If you’re interested in shooting on private property, ask the property owner. Chances are they’ll say yes, but it’s always better to ask permission first.

Show off Your Baby

Filming your BMW is a great way to show off your automotive baby, as long as you do it right. No one wants to see a grainy, low-resolution video of your car, whether you’re driving a BMW, a Mustang or a beat-up old Honda. Invest in a good camera and learn how to use it and you’ll make fantastic videos as long as you own your car.