Admittedly the title of this post is a slight exaggeration. I am not really an aspiring film maker. I have, however, become obsessed with the process of film making and post production work. I have also invested a lot of time and a small sum of money to make it my favorite distraction. In this post I am going to talk about a few of the production tools, websites, books and equipment that I am using to get the full experience.
First of all I will talk about my favorite new shiny thing. I stumbled across Davinci Resolve, which was the gateway drug into video editing for me. 
It is a professional editing tool used in real Hollywood movies. They have a free version that has more features and possibilities than most of the boxed versions I tried before I landed on Resolve.
Next, I found The Definitive Guide to Davinci Resolve 14: Editing, Color and Audio on Amazon. If you are considering purchasing it from Amazon please click on the Davinci Resolve book image below. It will help support this site by passing a small part of the purchase to me.
From the Back of the book:
DaVinci Resolve 14 is the most advanced editing, color correction, and audio post production solution for feature films, television shows and commercials. Its revolutionary workflow lets you switch between tasks with a single click, so you don’t have to learn multiple applications or translate projects between different software programs. This official step-by-step training guide covers the basics of editing, color correction and audio so you can start creating your own Hollywood caliber film and video today!
Back to me:
I am about half way through the book and it does a great job of walking you step by step through the Resolve interface and feature set. It also provides a lot of tips and tricks for using the tool in a way that suits your style. At the time of this posting the Kindle version is only $9.99 (awesome deal). There is also a Kindle book for an older version of Resolve that can be bought for $2.99 (also an awesome deal). I have bought both of them and both are relevant to the current versions of Resolve.
Since I already had a green screen on hand I was interested in doing some chroma keying (green screen) in Resolve, which with a little help from You Tube was able to do in less than 10 minutes. While browsing for green screen and other special effects tools I stumbled across another AMAZING video editing tool called Hit Film Studio
Hit Film also includes a free version (Hit Film Express) that includes most of the features of the paid version. Hit Film’s makers also make it very easy to start out at a very low price point and buy parts and pieces as you need them. From my understanding its strength is in the special effects area. Although it appears, from my brief use of it, that it is a very capable video editor.
The creators have provided a lot of free video content stepping you through doing just about anything you would ever want to do with a video editor including adding special effects to it.
For good measure I bought a few books from Amazon to help round out my education in amateur film making. Of the three I have only finished the one but I will do a review of that in another post a little later as I get closer to finishing all three.
Last of all I bought a Canon VIXIA R80 Camera (Camcorder). It’s not a camera meant for cinematography nor is it a DSLR but it is a pretty decent camera for what I am trying to do.
All that is left is to make a movie, which can’t be that difficult. Can it?
