But I haven't found one successful feature film that was distributed to DVD or even theaters, that got people's attention. Do you think these movies were rejected cause of the low grade equipment?
Generally speaking, artistic and critical considerations aside, from a business POV a (commercially) "successful feature film" is measured by it's return on investment, ROI.
ROI = Revenue divided by Expenses
ROI = R / E
Expenses are everything from production to promotion, the latter of which everyone seems to poo-poo to their fiscal detriment.
Spend all you want or can on production.
Do the same for promotion.
Go crazy.
B
uuuuut... how is that supposed to bring you back some actual cash-in-hand revenue?
Well, for actual revenue a film has to be seen by a paying audience.
Typically in a theater, VOD anomalies aside.
Lettuce say your magically muscle your no budget indie film THE GOOD TERRORIST into... what? Two? Three? Five theaters?
And through whatever magical promotion formulation you spend money on each theater grosses a decent enough $800 per night average the opening weekend.
$800 per night
x 3 Fri, Sat, Sun
= $2,400 per theater opening weekend
x 5 theaters
= $12,000
Attendance drops off across the week, but week #1 wraps up with a decent $15,000.
By fourth weekend expect the total gross to be 1.5 times the revenue of the first week.
$15,000
x 1.5
= $22,500
Same for the next four weeks and don't expect your no budget indie film to be carried much farther than eight weeks.
$22,500
x 1.5
= $33,750
Cool. Great. Wonderful.
Now, how much did you spend on your film, production and promotion?
Hopefully less than $33,750, which would just break even, meaning you could have sat on your sweet biscuits and done nothing and have no more no less in your bank account to show for it.
Okay, so now for the bigger/biggish films that'll actually go into >800 theaters.
HOW DID THEY GET INTO >800 THEATERS?
Probably they had a marketable star.
And if you can afford a marketable star then you can probably afford... wait for it... SOMETHING BETTER THAN A T2i et al!!!!!!!
If you want THIS then you gotta have THAT, and if you can get THAT then you can probably get THIS OTHER STUFF, TOO!
Inversely, if you want THIS and you DON'T HAVE THAT then you pretty much don't have to worry about THIS OTHER STUFF, TOO.
Package deal.