I am about to shoot a low budget movie/music video and I need a video editing program to use that's simple. I used Sony Vegas and adobe premiere  (I think) years ago but I lost those on a hard drive and I don't remember if they were hard to use or not. I'm looking for something fairly easy to learn. I want to do some effects like sparks, smoke, toxic gas ect... I also want to easily sync it to music/ sounds later.
I used to spend hours editing each frame on widows movie maker using adobe photoshop and it was a hassle. I know there is an easier way. I saw some little 10 year old that had an I-pad that added gun shots, flames, lightning and all kinds of silly stuff in minutes.  Any ideas?

It is simple but maybe too simple. With the post effects I want to do, I don't think I can easily do that with wmm. Unless there is some kind of add on or something. I think I hear someone tell me about adobe after effects being what I need but I don't know if that is a stand alone product or if I need to use it with Adobe. I will keep researching.

I tried looking at some tutorials with Adobe After effects and at this point, I am thinking I am going to have to set stuff on fire for real... It seems easier. LOL I hate learning curves but I guess if I want to do it right, I better start learning. I just thought there might be a simple program out there that would take all the hassle out of everything but I guess we are not there yet. No chocolate milk drinking fountains, cheese burger trees and no easy video editing. Curse you present time period!

CyberLink's PowerDirector is pretty good. It has most of the bells and whistles.
 
http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdirector/introduction_en_US.html?&r=1