How much can you spend?

Davor,

Every experienced member of this forum will likely first ask the following question (before answering yours): what do you intend to do with your movie? Depending on the target audience (and medium), you will decide what is the best acquisition tool.

The ultimate question is actually what C.I. asked -- what can you afford? You are suggesting a budget that is clearly well below $5000 (for which you could get your Sony), and apparently above the $200. Judging by your situation, it is likely below $1000. That obviously limits you to consumer models. Among those, there isn't much difference.

There are a few considerations here. First, it looks like this is you first project (at least first serious one). This tells us that your crew will likely be as inexperienced as you are. I would venture a guess that you would be writing the script, directing it, as well as shooting it with that camera (or camcorder). If that is in fact the case (i.e. you will operate the camera), you will then have to be thoroughly familiar with that camera, knowing what it can do and how to get the best out of it.

If you are planning to spend money on a sub- $1,000 consumer camcorder for making films, you will likely have to look for models where you'll have greatest amount of manual control (iris, shutter speed, gain/exposure, focus). All major players (Canon, Panasonic, Sony, JVC) offer some, although in many independent filmmaking forums, I've seen Canon mentioned more often than others. They just announced a new generation of their 'Vixia' (in EU, they're 'Legria'; in Japan, 'iVIS') models. Film enthusiasts from Europe tend to prefer getting American models, rather than EU, for two reasons. First, they are often 30% cheaper than in EU (a Legria M-306 goes for 450 EUR, and its American twin, Vixia M-300 sells for US$400). Second, EU models only support 25p and 50i frame rates, while US models have 24p, 30p and 60i. The only reason you'd prefer an EU model would be if your target is broadcast TV, which in EU countries still runs at 25p.

If you can't afford to buy a decent camera, and there's no place to rent, perhaps you can borrow from someone?

Davor,

First of all, I think you have a really solid idea. Think you really have something there.

Doing a bit of Googling... you're not anywhere near these guys ( http://www.tuna-film.hr/), are you? They seem geared towards professional productions, but they have the 7D, so if that was an option, it would definitely be worth dropping the cash to have a camera like that for a weekend.

But that's just a thought, and you've probably looked all this up already. You've already decided to work within your limitations and approach your project with a creative aesthetic, so I ought to simply chime in on that.

Vasic recommended the Canon Vixia models... I'd probably second that. If that is the range for you (?$1000), the Vixias offered just the right combination of features and image quality for a consumer camcorder. Their technology hasn't changed too much in the past few years either, so you might be able to snag last year's model for cheap, too.

One point though -- and believe me, I don't want to sound cliche -- but you need to put an even greater emphasis on your sound quality here. Especially for what you're doing. An audience forgives bad visuals, but gets agitated by poor sound. Look at the example of Cloverfield. The images were purposely "degraded" to resemble a consumer camcorder, but the sound design was still crystal clear and absolutely stellar. So, if you haven't been thinking about that already, you need to start thinking about it very quickly. Trust me, it will mean the difference between getting accepted into a festival or not. Seriously.

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http://vimeo.com/corax

One suggestion, dad beats her up and/or throws her out can be a bit cliche. It might be true but its been done. It might be more interesting if her own shame, and fears of what dad might do drive her away rather than anything her father actually does. That way it is her decision to leave. I think the theme becomes a bit deeper, its not the world against her so much as her perceptions against herself.

RJSchwarz

Hi!
First post! Hey all!
I agree with Vasic's suggestions on camcorders 100%. A TON of my friends have used the 7d and it almost depresses me how great it works (since ive never really been a fan of slr's).
my only other suggestion is that you can do a lot with adobe aftereffects in post to give your video a unique "look"

?DavorD
You know. Filming with a $200 camcorder will work. But it comes down to story structure. If you can get that right, the story will work. There are plenty of no-budget film festivals out there that will show your movie - heck, you can goto lulu.com and create a dvd real cheap and send it around to friends so they can watch it at home or even get it shown in the local theatre.

My advice is to just do it. Your first attempts will be terrible. But you'll get better. And you're a filmmaker! But the key is story structure - if you don't get that right, it won't work. And when i say it won't work, I mean it really will be nowhere.

Good luck to you.

Screenplay Structure: http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html ; http://www.youtube.com/user/clickokDOTcoDOTuk
Screenplay Formatting: http://www.finaldraft.com/ ; http://www.plotbot.com/

To add to the great advice above, my only other suggestion to think about in terms of format/camera is that you don't settle for a low quality format.

In reading your synopsis, the webcam portions caught my eye as images that SHOULD look slightly degraded relative to the rest of the movie. If you start out with a low-quality image for the entire movie, you don't have much room to go down to make the webcam scenes look different. If you start with a higher quality image, then in post, you can degrade in post-production and have some control over how you want the overall movie to look.

Brian Dzyak
Cameraman/Author
IATSE Local 600, SOC
http://www.whatireallywanttodo.com
http://www.realfilmcareer.com