35mm film camera options?

For 16mm, a used CP16 with a decent lens should fall right under your budget. It's a bit of a pain to load, but otherwise a sturdy camera.

As for sound, you should really have a sound person helping you since taking slates while shooting documentary style can be very unwieldy.
 
I've been working with film for a bit now - just know that for a good majority of your stuff, you'll have to do ADR, because most film cameras are more blenders than cameras: they're REALLY LOUD.

But, there is a certain aesthetic quality to film, and actually loading the magazine just makes you feel more attached and in-sync with the footage.
 
Couple of things.

First, I'm not going to argue about which looks better, film or video, we all have our own opinions on that. But keep in mind that shooting film is very different than shooting video. After your camera is purchased, the cost of shooting video is much less than the cost of shooting film. And because of this, a tendency develops with shooting video where the production will shoot many takes and adapt an attitude of "tape is cheap so what the heck, shoot alot." This doesn't always lead to the best results. Because the cost of shooting film is higher (when including film purchase, processing, and telecine), productions tend to shoot more carefully, which many times leads to better results.

And second, even with a noisy camera like the Arriflex 16S, if you use a blimp (like the one I am selling in the marketplace (free plug)), you can really lower the camera noise to the point of not needing to do ADR. A little SoundSoap or other audio editing software can remove the little that is left of the camera noise.

Blimp.jpg


ARRI Lightweight Fibre Glass Blimp 16 for sale

Best,
-Tim
 
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