A morning of editing: how do I shot movie

I do a TON of test renders when I'm editing footage to make sure the timing of everything is dead on. Thought I'd share a few with you guys so you can catch a glipse at The Process.

It's really quite hard to just pick stuff together randomly. You are far better off having a pretty exact idea of what you want in your head or storyboarded out. For this particular clip, I wanted a big crypt lord bursting through the door and knew pretty much exactly how I wanted it to look.

First I set the scene up to get the basic feel for the motion.
http://www.modenstudios.com/atraira/Mov ... mp%201.mov

After a few more test renders to tweak the timing, I was ready to start adding some fodder in.
http://www.modenstudios.com/atraira/Mov ... %201_4.mov

A few more test renders to perfect the timing of the flying bodies and I was happy with it. Now, this is a critical stage. This is where many aspiring movie editors call it a day. WRONG. A HUGE part of movies is the part you as the viewer don't see - the camera. Watch any real movie and, if you pay attention, you will realize that very, very rarely - if ever - is the camera completely static. Watch the above film again and notice how the camera just sits there. That's a big problem with most WoW movies - the author records it, edits it, and that's that. Since you're recording a static screen with a software camera, you're going to have to make your own camera moves if you want the video to look proper.
http://www.modenstudios.com/atraira/Mov ... %201_7.mov

Once you get the feel for it, creating dynamic camera moves is pretty easy. As you can see, the scene looks a LOT better now. I was happy with that move and didn't have to test render again afterwards. Now the final stage - color balance. That scene takes elements from a few different places, and none of them really match. Adjusting the Hue/Saturation and Levels - like in Photoshop - are very critical to a good movie. I can afford to be a LITTLE sloppy here (I would spend some more time getting the Lord right) because the entire sequence this scene is part of is going to have another set of coloration effects over the top of it; however, the closer I get the better it will look in the end. Here's what I end up with:
http://www.modenstudios.com/atraira/Mov ... %201_8.mov

Severely lacking in kittens.

Looks pretty sweet, out of curiosity, what programs do you use to make these movies?