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.
