It can be intimidating to read what kind of software you need for the entire process of producing a film to do one of the following (probably not comprehensive)

• Viewing, organizing footage
• Conversion
• Editing
• Compositing
• Color Correction
• Sound Editing
• Sound Mastering
• Export
• DVD Authoring

This section attempts to give some advice on a pragmatic approach (get the best results you can with reasonable effort) that doesn’t require you to buy software for a few thousand dollars just to get your film finished and cover all or most of the areas listed above.

Here are just a few useful free or inexpensive programs and a few thoughts on them:

• Audacity – Free audio editor that covers all the basic needs one has in filmmaking but is in some areas not comparable to commercial tools but definitely worth checking out. What can it be used for in filmmaking?
  • Reducing noise in your audio tracks (likely you will need that once in a while, if you’re a beginning filmmaker). Yes many people will rightly claim that the noise reduction is not of the best quality but it does help in many situations to make an unusable take good enough.
  • Building your own sound effects by manipulating samples you made yourself or got from somewhere else
  • Correcting errors in speech recordings e.g. by assembling a good take by taking parts of several takes, exchanging words etc.
• Gimp – Free Photoshop-like image editor. What can it be used for in filmmaking?
  • Build titles for you film if your editing software is not good at that
  • Retouch individual frames for special effects if you don’t own something like After Effects
  • Building your own visual effects by doing stuff like isolating muzzle flash in an image to later use it as an overlay for a frame in your film

To be continued …