My students and I just finished a unit in which they were producing short commercials using still images and voice overs on Windows Movie Maker. We were in the process of adding audio when a student asked if I had any music they could use, and a quick Google scored this gem. http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

Kevin MacLeod over at www.incompetech.com has produced tons of high quality music segments that served as a priceless resource for adding great music to each of the projects. Since scoring films/commercials etc… require fitting music to the feel of whatever is taking place visually, the search by mood feature allows you or your students to find exactly the sound they need. There is of course a search by genre option available if a certain style is required. Price? Just give credit where credit is due according to his faq.

Budget Idea

Consumer grade video cameras are cheap these days, and most schools will have one on hand. What most schools won’t have is a production level way of recording the audio. The solution? Silent Film. Windows Movie Maker actually puts together quite a nice little silent movie, and armed with the tracks from Kevin here is what you can do.

Video the students acting out whatever scene you wish.

Dump it into Windows Movie Maker.

Apply the Gray Scale and Film Age Filters to the video(which not only adds to the style, but covered for the fact that we had a really cheap camera.)

Slice the video and place plain black screen titles with an Old Timey font.

Head over the incompetech and download the appropriate tracks, and you’ve got yourself a nice little silent film.

Let me know if you and your students put one together. I’ll post it for all to see.