I’m wondering if people can tell me what they think the best special effects programs are. I am meaning programs that are not to difficult to use and that can do thinks like make fire, blow things up. i would really appreciate it.
Thanks

Welcome Elf!

I'm sorry to have to tell you that the phrases "not too difficult to use" and "make fire" don't go together in the world of video effects

Adobe After Effects can be quite a shock at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll learn quickly and find its up to almost anything you can throw at it. You CAN do simple explosions and fire by overlaying real footage of them filmed against black, in almost any (even basic) editing programs. Just set the fire clip to a mode of screen, add, or add pin.

detonationfilms has some great ready-made pyrotechnics for free.

Or if you're using a mac, Shake is a good program as well, it is like After Effects but a little easier to use in my opinion.

things like fire and explosions look better and are probably even easier to do in real life than in a post-production program.

just depends how you shoot it and what angles you use.

I agree with RFranco, it is more practical to do explosions nsuch in production, it will always look the most realistic in production (obviously). I'm shooting a short this summer and it calls for a golf cart explosion. I'm friends with a guy who has a pyrotechnic license so he's going to hook up some "stuff" to the broken down golf cart we bought for 40 bucks.

When I started out in learning special effects, After Effects was a good one to use, especially since if there is a certain effect that you want, it is almost guaranteed that you can buy a plugin that will suit your needs. One program I had the chance to tinker with was Discreet Combustion, that was was a great program for particle effects such as explosions and fires.

I havent ever had experience with shake before, but in the industry it is a program that will come up quite often. After effects is more of a less professional home user type program, while shake is used for the big time movies. I guess this all really depends upon what you can afford and what you need to accomplish.

hey thanks for that guys

um is after effects at the same level as Shake but for IBM computers or is there another program that is better and is use by the big time movie makers

like JRA8..etc said Shake is probably at a higher level than after effects (however, I don't know this for sure). After Effects is sold for PCs and Macs, but Shake is just for Macs.

Shake is a much higher level I believe, but I'm too knowledgeable in this area. Shake is for Mac and Unix(??) but not Windows. After Effects is for both Mac/Win.