Need help with adding animation to videos

[arunbg]

I am doing an introduction video for freshers joining my college. This is specially intended to motivate students majoring in Computer Science. This is a diffcult task for me, since I have little experience in video editing and almost no experience in animation.

The theme for the presentation is "Passion (for Computing)".

The opening shot features the running of a program in an ordinary IDE (done by screen capture tools). The camera then shows two students sitting before a laptop, programming avidly.
Now we need to show bright light emitting from the laptop and bits and pieces of code and other things circling the students.

Any suggestions as to how to animate the video to show light and "floating code" in the easiest possible way, are appreciated. Is there a reliable way of superimposing flash on videos? Any specific recommendation for software required and shooting technique will be very welcome.

 

[iamhere]

does this mean that your students will contribute to free and open source software?
IF so (and only if), read this:You can use Blender for doing 3D animation and Cinelerra for video editing. But you will have to do some learning, there's no getting around it. BOTH are avaialble on the Dynebolic Linux live CD.

I'll wait for what your students end up writing :)