If you do obtain access to such facilities, precisely what equipment might you use, and what advantages will such equipment bring? Knowing this in advance will enable you to be more ambitious when planning your own project.

The most sophisticated editing suites resemble the mission control rooms for space shuttle flights. The computer power available is not much less. Here, images can be manipulated at will to create a huge range of special effects. And there is still the basic editing equipment to perform the fundamental editing process of arranging cuts in the required sequences.

The editing suite consists of a panel of in-built monitors and a huge array of controls. Many of these controls have solely technical functions, regulating the transport and playback of the tape on source and edit decks. Others control the audio signal, allowing levels to be adjusted. Those which control the image alone allow varying degrees of adjustment colour tone, brightness and contrast, for example, or speed, so that fast or slow motion sequences can be introduced.

There may also be the option of a wide variety of special effects wipes, tumbles, dissolves and other transitions for you to use between scents. In most studios there will be a technician who will be thoroughly skilled in using the facility and who will work to your instructions, so you should not worry overmuch about precise technicalities.

A camcorder is capable of processing and recording 11 million pieces of signal information every second and can keep on recording at this rate for several hours. Most computers could not sustain having to store this amount of information for long.