Resources for Filmmakers

The Forums here are a good resource for young filmmakers.

Finding music you can use in a low or no budget production can be tricky. If you can compose and perform the music yourself you're in the clear. Music made in Apple's Gargage Band is free to use (just don't steal someone else's melody).

Adobe has a sound edit program called Soundbooth and another called Audition these can import soundtrack templtes they provide that are royalty free.

Certain songs over 70 years old may be in the public domain. You are free to use things in the public domain without permission.

This ARCHIVE is good for finding public domain film footage. You might find music there too.

Techno musician Moby generously created a website for his music that he allows non-commercial film makers to use for free.

There are many places online to buy royalty free music (meaning you pay once but not again for different usage rights, like TV, cable, theaters, web) at affordable prices.
Pump Audio -- Digital Juice -- Opuzz are a few I know of.

Finding stock footage can come in handy. You might not be able to shoot a car exploding, but plenty of people have already done it. If you can edit it into your footage and match the colors and lighting you'll fool a lot of people.

Stock footage from iStockPhoto -- or from Digital Juice -- is pretty affordable.

If you know about keying or compositing (placing one layer of video over another for special FX) you might want to use Explosions and gun flares from Video Copilot.

Writing a script and breaking it down.

Free software to format your script correctly is available from Celtx.