1. Watch out for minimum fees: some places have minimums so high that you might end up paying as much to develop 100ft of film as you would for 1000ft.

2. Not sure, but there are electric motor addons for the K-3.

3. What you get on film will bear little relation to what you see in the viewfinder. Film involves either guessing exposures or faffing around with light-meters, you can't tell what you're going to get otherwise until you get the developed film back.

Do you have any links to resources on how light meters work? any tips or anything of the sort, because I really don't want to waste my first reel and have it come out like garbage.

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does this sound correct?

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It's correct. But you won't get exactly 100 usable feet from a 100 foot roll of film.

First there's threading feet and the few feet where you will have your timing card and the few feet where you'll have your slate (to ID scenes) and second and third takes. Then there's your shooting ratio. If you were a very experienced filmmaker you might be able to get away with a shooting ration of 4 or 5 to 1.

It sounds like you are shooting something (skateboard riding) that isn't always completely controllable. A boarder tries a trick a few times before he gets it right - you're talking quite a few takes.

My suggestion is to budget at least 10 to 1. Shoot 1000ft to get 100 usable feet.

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question batch number 2. I'm looking into getting the K-3, this camera would shoot 7215 correct? and how exactly do you load it? And I know the wind up motor is good for 15ft but after that do you wind it up and it goes on its own or is there a trigger?

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The Krasnogorsh K3 will shoot all 16mm stocks.
That camera uses what is called a daylight load. You open the side of the camera, drop the reel of film in, thread it through the gate and onto the take-up reel.

Yes. It has a trigger. You will wind the spring until it stops. When you are ready to shoot, you press the trigger. Releasing the trigger will stop the film from rolling.

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question batch #3 perhaps the most stupid question, since i'm used to shooting minidv I change exposures and see the result, is this the same with 16mm or is there calculation that has to be done, and do you even see slightly what your final picture looks like though the viewfinder?

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No. The lens and viewfinder are nothing like video cameras. You will need a light meter - standard equipment for any photographer.

The built in light meter on the K3 is quite unreliable.

There are two basic kinds of meters: reflected-light (they measure the light reflecting from a scene) and incident-light (they measure the light falling onto a scene). Each type has its advantages and its disadvantages. Some meters have accessories that enable you to use them to read either reflected light or incident light. Reflected-light meters that read a wide angle of view are also called averaging meters. They account for most of the reflected-light meters in use, including those built into cameras. Another type of reflected-light meter, the spot meter, is designed to take readings from only a small part of the scene.

If you need more detail the web is an amazing place. So is your local camera shop.

Type "light meter" into Google and you'll come up with thousands of sites that go into great detail. For a more personal touch walk into your local camera shop and ask them about a light meter for a beginning filmmaker. They will be glad to walk you - step by step - through the process.
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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

Thank you all for the amazing replies. And about actual usable film, I'm still primarily shooting in minidv but want to use 16mm for transitional parts, like it'll show candids of the rider maybe cruising around or maybe sitting at a ledge with their friends just laughing or whatever, I don't have the budget to be shooting all of their messups.

Is the loading film pretty explanitory because I don't want to mess it up, or how about when you remove the reel? does it have to be in an dimly lit area, and how should it be shipped to the processor?

Thanks for the vast info on the light meters, I will definitely look into this. I really wish I had photography experience, but my life has always been into shooting video to perfection and film just seems like a challening new exciting experiment to jump into.

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one more question, do you know on film shots where it looks like for a little bit the film caught fire, like it'll flash red, orange, yellow kinda. I heard to create that all you have to do is remove your eye from the viewfinder while shooting and this will be created, is this true also?

thanks again, and please excuse my stupidity.

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it'll show candids of the rider maybe cruising around or maybe sitting at a ledge with their friends just laughing or whatever

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Note, of course, that you won't get sound sync with a clockwork camera: if they're just silent cutaways that's no problem, but if you do want to get sound you'll need either a sync camera or a lot of time to faff around manually syncing it up in the edit.

Yes I realize there won't be sound sync, which is complete ok, I wouldn't be shooting any sort of dialog or anything so thats not a problem, and any sounds of acutal skating we can recreate those sounds to my vx and sync them up.

thanks for the replies.