Hello there,

Last year, for a school project, a few of my friends and I made a short (about 20 minutes) movie (my character was Benny the mexican alien... long story). This year, because of the good comments we recieved about the first, we're thinking of making a sequel. Sure, sequels often lose something of the original, but we'll give it a shot anyway.

This time, however, we'll need a few more special effects, one could say. Our last movie was very props-and-camera-angle in the way of visuals, so we're trying to aime a little higher this time - all while keeping the amusing sense of surreal cheesyness we had at first.

So that brings my to my inquiry. Are there any free programs that break film up into frame-by-frame pieces, which we could then use our awesome MS paint/Photoshop skills to edit and add some not-very-subtle special effects? Free is the key here, and easy to use would also be helpful. Currently, I've got Avid Free DV for movie editing, and I'm not too shabby with it (except titles, I can't manage to make titles). We've also, of course, got Windows Movie Maker. OS is Windows XP, since I've noticed a lot of movie editing software is Mac only.

Any programmes or techniques that come to mind?

Many thanks,

Benny