A short hello

Hi there,
I'm new to the world of filmmaking, have been studying for the past few months and trying to gather equipment together for shooting my first no-budget feature later this year.
I was wondering if anyone could reccomend a couple of good, but cheap lol DV cameras? I know I've gotta look for something second hand, of course I'd love a Canon XL-2 or similar but yeah, not loving the price range lol. I've been scouring ebay in the vague hopes of finding a bargin.

Speaking of costs, I have a question for everyone:

What would be your dream budget?
Obviously we could all go nuts on 80 mil lol but somewhat realistically, what would be a budget that you feel you could just have too much fun with?

Mine right now would be £10,000... Probably sounds stupid to most but omg the things I could do just on that? hehehe I'm gonna go and drool over the idea again, I look forward to getting to know you guys :)

~D
 
Welcome to the crazy and wonderful world of indie film. :) You are bravely venturing into feature films... I have not yet done so. One of the myriad of reasons I haven't is that pesky budget thing. :)

I have been involved in production on a feature with a budget of 'under $1,000,000.00' and it was pretty well run and I got paid. I am currently in pre-production on another feature (not my own) looking at a $200,000-$500,000 budget.

For myself, I have two feature projects I would love to make. One I think I can do for about $10K. The other will take $1.5 million to make well. It's special effects heavy and a period piece.

Tomorrow, I am shooting my next short film- with a budget of $200 (which is mainly for food for cast/crew). You work with what you have. :)

Cheers!
 
Lilith said:
You work with what you have.

Never a truer word has been spoken :)

It's amazing what you can do with a little imagination, or at least I hope it will be?
I don't really have an established budget right now, I'm still trying to gather equipment together (finding the money for a camera is big one lol) but I think I can do it on about 3k? *crosses fingers*
I know I've got zero interiors to shoot so I'm gonna play around with some weird visuals in an attempt to compensate. But the one thing I do have access to is a whole bunch of combat trained people, I can see a lot of action scenes coming :cool:

Lookin' forward to getting to know everyone, thanks for the welcome :)

~D
 
My ideal budget would pay everyone, crew and actors, and secure one good location for several weeks. I'd want to pay myself for a full year at a moderate salary so I can direct, cut, sell/promote while also paying bills and eating on occasion. So I'd say $100K.

I just did the film-edit-promote thing while working a full-time job, raising 2 kids, alienating a girlfriend, yada yada yada. You've got to figure in yourself in a real budget, you've gotta eat and the caretaker of the film should be able to concentrate on doing just that.
 
rrk1962 said:
I just did the film-edit-promote thing while working a full-time job, raising 2 kids, alienating a girlfriend, yada yada yada.

I hear you man. I hear you.

I'd want $50K for my next one. It would mostly be new equipment and locations. After the Macbeth 3000 premiere I talked to AT LEAST 20-30 people who begged to be in the next movie. Granted, it'll take a bit more time to get good performances out of non-experienced actors, but it's worth it to not have to deal with unions, etc.

Bleedingsky- The camera we used for our feature was a Sony DCR-TRV25. There's still some after-market cameras floating around on Ebay, but you can't find them in stores these days. For a 1CCD camera it's quite amazing. Check out our trailer on www.superguncinema.com if you'd like to see an example of the video. It's the trailer for Macbeth 3000.
You could probably pick one up for under $700 (CAN).
Another good camera that I recently had the oppourtunity to use is the Canon GL2. Fantastic piece of machinery, and not very expensive.
 
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