I know that when I started brickfilming I just wanted to buy all the stuff that the pros use.  But there are very simple and free ways to get around these problems of not spending 200 dollars on new software.  For animation iStopmotion costs around 50 - 60 $ but there are things like monkey jam, heilum frog and claymation studio for people using a webcam. for those not I suggest VirtualDub it has changed my life completely in brickfilming.  It is all free and very easy to use if you add on MPEG 5.  Now onto voice recording.  You don't need a high tech audio software to make good voice recordings.  Audacity is just a simple and free audio editing program and any old mic would work on it unless you run windows vista.  Editing programs are all over the place.  Adobe photoshop and gimp are very good programs.  Photoshop costs around 60 $, gimp is free also if you want to try a software called PicNick another free program.  Now onto finalizing.  I use windows movie maker vista edition but I suggest Sony Vegas, iMovie and Adobe premier pro.  These are all things i suggest a starter has good luck!

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