Question

[David W. Jones]

What camera and crew will your budget support over x number of shooting days?
Night shots and night vision, again what have you budgeted for these shots?

If this is just a hobby project shoot it with what you have and have fun. If this is a serious project then you need to budget accordingly and test in preproduction.

Good Luck!

Dave

[sonofaresiii]

Honestly, the more important thing to look at here is sensor size. I personally don't think a 35mm sensor fits the project. Home videos, even when they were shot on film (super 8), had deep DOF. You'll end up suffering a bit with low light and other qualitative issues, but in the end it seems to me like a 1/3" camera is more suitable for the look of the film.

Sonofaresiii, while it's good to think that people don't want to watch crap, I don't think it's going to be the camera that determines whether or not the film looks bad. Spend time on production design, costumes, blocking, and framing. If you watch the BTS of cloverfield, it's pretty interesting how they couldn't rely on standard coverage. Since they were going off of "found footage" it's not like they can just cut into a closeup at the right time, instead the blocking had to make that come about and it had to make sense to the story. Figuring out how you're going to handle that will probably be the most interesting challenge you'll come across.

In the end you have to see what you like. I personally would try and shoot with available light at night and just pump the gain, or even find a camera with nightvision and use that.

sorry for being unclear, most of what i was talking about was in regards to lighting and filming techniques, not the camera. i actually believe on a big screen people will be far more forgiving of camera quality than many think. but if, for instance, you decide to shoot the whole thing handheld and super shaky to make it "more dynamic and realistic," you're setting yourself up to fail. or you decide you're going to shoot it all by turning on the overhead lights and cranking the iso. these might be more "authentic" techniques, but they're going to end up looking like crap.