@Shain Pretty amazing piece of work. Thanks Shain!

Even forgetting that the biggest micro-budget successes, ever, were shot with cameras, like consumer Hi8, substantially inferior to what you can pick up for under $500 today, folks tend to forget that as production values improve, so too do audience expectations for other aspects of the production.

In a word, audiences will put up with a lot, from a movie which looks like crap. They're far less apt to do so, if the product has a professional sheen which other aspects of the production (performance, writing, production design, etc.) don't equal.

So be careful what you wish for.

One Might also posit that an Analog camcorder actually has a more pleasing to the human eye "dynamic range" than a contemporary digital video camera. I know that's stretching it a bit, but I have seen some pretty incredible results in terms of "Feeling" from analog camcorders when compared to todays highly compressed high definition camcorders.

Shot on iPhone: "This is not a film": http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1667905/