Film Street This excellent children’s film-making site is full of great stuff - check it out!
Soundsnap Great site for finding and sharing copyright-free sound effects
SimplyDV Excellent resource to help you choose, buy and use your camcorder
British Film Institute Check out the BFI’s world-renowned archive, cinemas, festivals, films, publications and learning resources
Film Education Find out about current educational material on film and film-making
The Internet Movie Database Get your film-making inspiration from the web’s definitive movie guide
First Light Movies Funding and inspiration for young film-makers - and some great example movies

Editing your movie on a computer

After a few hours of filming and then the reward of watching the hilarious results on your TV, everyone will have had a fantastic time at your party. You’ll send them home talking about nothing else! But of course, if you’ve been bitten by the movie-making bug, there is one more thing you just might try! How about copying your movie to your computer and adding the finishing touches to it there?

Whether you choose to edit your movie on your computer is entirely up to you. However, all we can say is that we think it’s definitely worth it, and that the results can be spectacular! Most computers have simple video-editing software pre-installed - common titles include Adobe Premiere, Apple iMovie, Final Cut, Pinnacle Studio, Windows Movie Maker, Ulead MediaStudio and Roxio VideoWave, although there are many, many more.

Editing a movie and burning it to DVD is too large a topic to cover as part of our tips and tricks, but here is a quick list of some of the basic things you can do with your movie on a computer:

Add a soundtrack
Add special sound or visual effects
Create transitions between scenes
Fade sound and video in and out
Create a title sequence and credits
Use slow-motion
Lighten or darken individual scenes
Increase the volume for individual scenes
Incorporate scenes from other movies
Create DVD menus
Burn a DVD
and much more!

If you’ve never tried video-editing before, you’ll never have a better excuse!