The availability of digital media brings motion picture productions to home PCs across the globe. With tiny cameras or even mobile phones, merely anyone has access to recording devices for video clips. This is not such a new phenomenon. As early as in the 1980s, video recorders captured picture and sound to tapes. The first generation of home-video productions features family celebrations, vacations or the first steps of little children.

Much has changed since those early days of taping video material. The reason for this is the performance of modern computer technology. Today any conventional PC is powerful enough to run applications to edit digital flicks. Any avi or mpeg sequence captured with any sort of camera can be cut, arranged, and composited through a computer.

Software applications such as Adobe’s Premiere (http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere) or the Avid Liquid Series (http://avid.com/products/liquidfamily/index.asp) deliver easy-to-use solutions for editing motion pictures. With advanced cutting effects and various tools to optimize the raw video material, they put everyone into the director’s seat. Instead of simply cutting sequences together, such production tools enable hobby users to put a professional touch to home-videos.

More ambitious part-time filmmakers can even integrate spectacular special effects into their work. Once someone has acquired the not-so-easy skills of mastering an application such as Adobe After Effects (http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects), there is merely no limit to the level of post-production visuals. Animated elements or wicked light effects can lift a dry video sequence to a breathtaking action scene.

For all those, who want to create their own version of awesome animation movies by the likes of “Shrek” or who want to revive the “Lord of the Rings”, a professional 3D animation application such as Maya by Autodesk (www.autodesk.com) are the tool to have. Besides paying the heavy price for this complete visual effect software, they would also need to spend anywhere between 1 and 15 years on learning to use the program.

But then again, no effort is too hefty when one can one day hear the words: “And the Oscar goes to… YOU!”