I've done two period movies now, and have done a little bit with knife throws and arrows, but we rely heavily on quick movement of the camera and a sound effect as the camera stops as it reaches the person with knife or arrow in them. It has worked well for what we needed it to, but now I need dozens of archers firing arrows, and many of the bows are going to be dummy bows. I have never done special effects in my movies, as I haven't had the software capability. What would be required shooting and editing wise in order to have arrow effects made on the computer, is it possible on a low budget? Or should I just have arrows shot in the air and tape them and then have camera come down on a different shot and add sound effects as soldiers react to the arrows in them? Right now I have Premiere 6.0, and hopefully I will be getting After Effects soon.

Flying arrows and knives are fairly easy. You can even do them in NLEs like Final Cut if you have to, but After Effects would make it a lot simpler and better. Basically, you have three routes you can take.

You can use a photo of the arrow, from the proper angle, matted out so only the arrow is visible (this can be done in Photoshop, and imported into AE as a transparent PNG file). Then you just move it along a path in AE, put a load of motion-blur on it, and you're done. You'll have to use cuts or clever panning to get the arrow to stick into people, because the graphics for that would be significantly harder.

The second way is to do it in 3d. You'd animate an arrow, using the video as a background plate, and render the entire thing in 3d.

My personal favorite is the hybrid method: you animate the arrow in 3d over the background plate, render it without the background, and then layer that in in After Effects where you have full control over motion blur and lighting.