To keep this general, here are some things to think about:
DAS: Direct Attached Storage - Thunderbolt, eSata, USB 3.0, FW800, FW400, USB are the rough pecking order. FW400 is better than 100 MB ethernet, and FW800/USB 3.0 are equivalent to Gigabit Ethernet.
NAS: The network matters - latency over WiFi can be a big bottleneck as can the controller chip / lack of cache in less expensive NAS.
Think in terms of the bottlenecks - For streaming a song, AirPlay shows you what to expect - a slight delay, but the system can buffer the music to overcome little lags and delays due to network burps. DAS is much more responsive - especially for little file input/output as opposed to streaming a large file or song.
NAS does offer some nice features like cross platform sharing and with a good network can be shared effortlessly with several clients that don't mind sharing the speed of the device. DAS is designed for one user and optimized for speed - especially for database workloads like iPhoto.
NAS can be harder to back up, where DAS works easier with whatever backup program you use on your mac.
Your iPhoto database will be the last thing you want to move. It has no provision for splitting the large files from the database files and the latency of reading / writing to the NAS might make you feel the program is too slow. Try it out, but don't be surprised if it's the least responsive by it's design.
You want programs that can use local database and thumbnails on the fast SSD and store large original files on NAS or slower storage.
Aperture works amazingly well if you find iPhoto too laggy when stored on the NAS.
I would start with the iTunes media folder - move that to the NAS and see how you like the performance.
Then get a tool like WhatSize or DaisyDisk so you can quickly measure what folders on the SSD are largest as you prune things down.
You might find you don't need all the audio loops from Garage Band or other surprising folders that make a difference in what you want to bring along on the SSD.
Have fun with the tweaking - you'll learn how things work. Also, it won't be long until ThunderBolt storage is more available - your NAS might even have a DAS connection for when you really need some speed to access / move files to the NAS.
Don't forget to back up your NAS. CrashPlan might be a great thing to try for that.
Over the network it does not matter what file system is used on the hardware drive, because the computer hosting the drive (making it available through the network) will access it. Your Mac will just make generalized requests over the network for files, folders, etc. and the host will access the file system and serve the files. Network requests are standardized and the host answers them and converts between those and the actual file system on the hardware.
What you were reading about not being able to write to NTFS, was people who either had a partition with NTFS on their native HD in the Mac computer or who were attaching USB drives. In both these cases, the Mac has to access (and possibly modify) the file system on drive directly (without an intermediate agent) and needs to be able to deal with the specifics of the file system directly.
And no, there is no danger of damage (well, not unless you or the Mac intentionally delete files or move folders that are needed otherwise).
Best Answer
Yes you can. Since you have Tuxera NTFS installed, you are able to read/write to the drive fine, so iMovie will have no problem saving to it. iMovie projects aren't as complex as iPhoto libraries, so you shouldn't have any problems.