Free Film Making Resources
Table of Contents
📝Writing
- WriterDuet is a screenwriting software for writing and editing screenplays and other forms of mass media with both a free and paid plan. Plus 50% off for students and educators
- BoardThoughts is a free online storyboard creator, it may not look that nice but it works well!
- I❤PDF gives a variety of PDF tools all in one place. All are 100% FREE and easy to use! Merge, split, compress, convert, rotate, unlock, and watermark PDFs with just a few clicks.
- Scribus can be used to create professional-looking documents like books, newsletters, and brochures.
🎨 Graphics
- Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. Use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.
- Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. It is made by artists who want to see affordable art tools for everyone.
- Paint.NET is image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
- FireAlpaca is a free Digital Painting Software that is available in 10 languages and compatible with both Mac and Windows. Simple tools and controls let you draw an illustration easily.
- Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software that runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows desktop computers.
- Figma is a web-based graphics editing and design app. You can use it to do all kinds of graphic design work from wireframing websites, designing mobile app interfaces, prototyping designs, crafting social media posts, and everything in between.
- BeFunky’s is an all-in-one online Creative Platform has everything you need to easily edit photos, create graphic designs, and make photo collages.
- Sumo Paint is a free painting and drawing web application similar to Adobe Photoshop.
- MyPaint is a free and open-source painting program that works well with graphics tablets.
- Vectr is a free graphics editor that allows you to design and edit vector graphics online, without a steep learning curve.
🎧 Audio
- LMMS is a free and open source DAW available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. It provides all the features you would expect in standard DAW software.
- Cakewalk by BandLab, is a professional tool to compose, record, edit, mix, master, and share songs all effortlessly and for free.
- Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
- Ocenaudio is a cross-platform, easy-to-use, fast, and functional audio editor. It is the ideal software for people who need to edit and analyze audio files without complications.
- Fairlight lets you work with advanced 3D audio formats such as Dolby ATMOS, Auro 3D, 3D Spaceview™ and more.
- Ardour is an open source DAW software.
- Waveform is the world’s best, fully featured, completely unlimited free DAW for all music creators.
✂ Video Editing
- Shotcut is a free and open-source, cross-platform video, audio, and image editing program for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, and Windows.
- DaVinci Resolve is an all-in-one combination software for video editing, color correction, and motion graphics. Its color correction tools are industry standard.
- AVID Media Composer | First offers all of the power of the full version of Media Composer for free, with a few notable limits.
- Kdenlive is a powerful free and open-source cross-platform video editing program made by the KDE community. Feature-rich and production-ready.
- OpenShot is an open-source editor offering robust features you’d expect from industry software.
- Olive is an open-source editor currently under development, be aware that it’s still in alpha and is not considered stable (as of v0.2).
- vidyo.ai allows you to create short-form videos from long ones instantly using AI.
- VidMix is a simple video editor with a variety of tools that works entirely in your browser for free.
📷 Photo Editing
- Photopea is a web-based photo and graphics editor. It is used for image editing, making illustrations, web design, or converting between different image formats.
- Pixlr is a cloud-based set of image editing tools and utilities, including several photo editors and a photo-sharing service.
- GIMP is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks.
- RawTherapee is capable of editing Raw photo files, as well as other formats. With its extensive range of editing tools, you’ll be able to correct distortion, boost colors, recover details, and much more.
- Darktable is an open-source photography workflow application and raw developer. A virtual light table and darkroom for photographers.
- Digikam provides a comprehensive set of tools for importing, managing, editing, and sharing photos and raw files.
👾 Visual Effects
- HitFilm is a free video editing and visual effects software with professional-grade VFX tools for you to make awesome content, films, or gaming videos.
- Natron is a free, open-source video compositor, similar in functionality to Adobe After Effects, Foundry’s Nuke, or Blackmagic Fusion.
- Houdini Apprentice is a free version of Houdini FX that students, artists, and hobbyists can use to create personal non-commercial projects.
- With Nuke Non-commercial, you get access to free, non-watermarked versions of Nuke, NukeX, and even top-of-the-line Nuke Studio allowing you to composite, edit and finish with industry-leading tools.
- With Mari Non-commercial, you get access to a free, non-watermarked version of Mari allowing you to create professional-looking textures.
- Fusion features a true 3D workspace for compositing and creating cinematic visual effects and advanced broadcast motion graphics. It’s ideal for adding 3D models, objects, text, or particles to your footage.
- Unreal Engine is the world’s most open and advanced real-time 3D creation tool for photoreal visuals and immersive experiences.
🚄 Motion Design/UI Design
- Jitter is a freemium simple motion design creator entirely in the browser.
- PenPot is a web-based open-source design tool that bridges the gap between designers and developers.
- Draftoola is an open-source UI/UX prototyping tool for designing both static and animated layouts.
- Figma is an all-in-one platform where you can design and prototype.
- Framer is an intuitive tool for designing and publishing responsive websites.
- Cavalry can be used in real-time for advertising, mobile, data visualization, web, broadcast, UI, generative art, experiential, games, and more.
- Rive is a real-time interactive design and animation tool that helps teams create and run interactive animations anywhere.
- Fable allows you to compose incredible motion content with all the necessary tools, and export to any format without leaving the browser.
- Enve allows you to create vector animations, raster animations, and even use sound and video files.
🤸🏾♀️ 3D Modeling/Animation
- Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D-printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, virtual reality, and, formerly, video games.
- Synfig Studio is a free and open-source 2D animation software, designed as a powerful industrial-strength solution for creating film-quality animation using vector and bitmap artwork.
- Blockbench is a 3D modeling program that allows you to create models only using voxels.
- Open Toonz is an open-source animation software developed in part by Studio Ghibli for use in their projects.
- Pencil2D is an easy, intuitive tool to make 2D hand-drawn animations.
- Material Maker is a procedural material authoring tool based on the Godot Engine.
🪀Misc
- TinyWow offers PDF, video, image, and other online tools to make your life easier all online for free.
- FontJoy helps you mix and match different fonts to find the perfect font pairing for you.
- cutout.pro offers a wide variety of creative tools powered by AI.
- Handbrake is an open-source tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.
- Make your screen a RGB light panel allows you to turn many screens with a browser into a colorful light.
💰Budgeting
- RJFS Budgeting 101 Guide; This is a simplified beginner budget template meant for smaller productions.
- Freelancer Rate Calculator; use this to see how much to charge to sustain your freelance business.
📅Pre Production
- Moodboard Template; This template gives two examples of mood boards, one for a film and one for a website.
- This Storyboard Template gives you a fully completed storyboard, a blank storyboard with labels, and a completely blank storyboard.
- The RJFS Location Scout Checklist is a great thing to have on hand to help you take notes when checking out locations for shooting.
⚖ Production
- This Call Sheet Template gives you a lot of flexibility to make your production as efficient as you want.
- Shotlist Template by StudioBinder, it provides a variety of camera “lingo” for use.
- Sound Report Template by Filmscourcing
🎓Creative Development
- This Director’s Worksheet is a really simple way to help you flesh out the direction of a story that you’re working on.
- The Story Clock utilizes the simple method of visualizing your story like a clock. Learn how to use it here.
- A really simple properly formatted Script Template
📝Legal Mumbo Jumbo
🎵 Audio
🎼Royalty Free Music
- NoCopyrightSounds is a YouTube channel full of copyright-free electronic music that can be used anywhere as long as you link back to the original upload.
- Vlog No Copyright Music is a YouTube channel full of copyright free for use by content creators, they add a new song every three days!
- Bensound provides music for noncomercial projects with attribution back to them.
- Purpleplanet offers a free license for their music that allows you to use it all over any social media with attribution back to them.
- WhatFunk makes music that can be used for commercial and non-commercial purposes; while credit isn’t required it’s appreciated.
- MusOpen provides recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions.
- MobyGratis is a resource for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
- Free Music Archive offers free access to openly licensed, original music by independent artists around the world.
- Incompetech has free music for use anywhere with attribution.
- FreePD provides public domain music that is free for commercial use, free of royalties, free of attribution and all CC0.
- Audionautix is full of music composed and produced by Jason Shaw. It’s all royalty-free, even for commercial purposes, as long as you provide credit.
- Beatoven.ai allows you to create royalty-free AI generated music.
- Pixabay stock music
🎹Sample Kits
🥁Sound Effects
- Pixabay stock sfx
✨Graphics
🔳Vectors
- CGI Spread Free Vectors
- Pixabay stock vectors
🧱Textures
- Toptal Subtle Patterns
- The Pattern Library
- The Texture King
- Patternico is a free seamless pattern maker.
🔎Icons
✍️Fonts
- Free Fonts Behance Moodboard by Felix Braden
📁Illustrations
- Drawkit, free illustrations weekly
- Pixabay stock illustations
📡 Other
- Creative Market, download free quality assets each week!
- Free Design File offers a massive amount of vectors, stock photos, PSD files, icons, and fonts for personal and commercial uses.
- Create ✨animated✨ custom emotes and emoji GIFs for Twitch, Slack, and Discord using MakeEmoji.
- FilmGrab’s library comprises over 2500 separate films and 160k images all hand-picked, representing the most comprehensive library of film shots to be used for references.
- Mapcrunch drops you in a random street view location which can be used for landscape references.
- Pixabay stock gifs
- x6ud’s tool for animal references
- Reference Angle is great for getting reference pictures for faces with specific emotions or angles.
👩🏽💻Visuals
📷Stock Photos
- Create stock photos with AI using STOCKIMG.AI
- Photobash.co offers only a few free stock packages but they are filled to the brim each
- Pixabay stock photos
📼Stock Footage
- Pixabay stock footage
🌟Visual Effects
- Blenderkit; has 12k+ free models, materials, HDRs & more
🎨Colors
- POLINE is an enigmatic color palette generator, that harnesses the mystical witchcraft of polar coordinates.
👩🏻🏫Education
🎥Filmmaking
🗿 Modeling/Animation
🌌Phototography
💼Licencing