With Ebay, just look at people's feedback rating- if it's close to 100% you're pretty safe buying from them. And like Sadistro said- read every word in the auction to see exactly what they're selling.

Buying online can be risky- ebay or otherwise. As long as you don't buy impulsively and research the company you'll be okay.

Thanks... I'll still most likely buy from an actual store--go and pick up the camera myself... I'm too paranoid & I prefer to buy at an actual store than online--I only order online if I have to or if it's such a good deal that I have to or something but that's about it(so if I found an EXTREMELY good deal on a camera I might buy it on ebay if it was from a good seller who had a money back guarantee or something, otherwise probably not). I have been ripped off online before. By Amazon.com actually...luckily it wasn't anything really expensive, but I still lost about $20 thanks to them. I never even got the item I bought. I was pissed...I guess they had somebody dishonest working for them who cashed my money order and then they kept saying they hadn't received my money order--yet SOMEBODY got the money from it and I never got what I ordered. :rolleyes: So I'm completely against amazon now...would never buy from there again!

Even though it's probably not "correct" for me to suggest it, there is some really REALLY cool looking software that can give your standard video camera footage a look that you shot it on film that I've been playing with a lot lately. Magic Bullet softens the edges of everything and anything in front of it. The trick is to softly put the backgrounds out of focus. You can accomplish this by pulling up to your subject matter as close as humanly possible when filming. No, it is definitely a not end all solution to making things look like they were shot on 35mm, but it's still a damn good look. Keep up on the lighting and sound work most importantly ! That always stands out on an indie by far. Even a little effort goes a long way in this digital age :o
CK

did you buy from a seller on their? if you did it didn't have anything to to with amazon it was between you and that seller..amazon only get involved if their is a problem..i tend to try to steer away from amazon marketplace sellers unless amazon isn't selling an item cheap enough and the sellers are..just a thought though!

Thank you! :cool:

No, it was directly from amazon so it was 100% their fault, but they wouldn't do anything about it. if it had been through a seller I probably wouldn't have ordered it in the first place.

oh right..that's strange, amazon is usually good..

I'll never see them as being a good company anymore, I'll always see them as being the biggest rip-off company in the world. :p

Make movies, MSA. Make movies because you WANT to make movies, MSA. You don't need a thousand people or a million dollars to do it. Use what you have and make the best use of anything and everything that is available to you. I personally say that filmmaking is a way of story telling. If you give 5 cameras to 5 people with the same outline, you will get back 5 different movies.
Anyhoooo anything you need that I can do is at your service.

thanks...i might not need a million dollars to make a good movie...but i do need actors...and people are hard to find around here. even my family won't hardly help me out(aside from my mom & dad but even they wanna rush through things which you can't do if you wanna make a good movie)

guess i am definitely gonna have to bribe people to be in my full length film. "if you show up to every shoot you get something free" (and it'll have to be something cheap) ...apparently it's the only way when making a no budget film in a shitty town. Or I thought about doing a contest...if they show up EVERY time their name gets put in a drawing for a tv/dvd player or something. I'll have to come up with something because I know how people around here are--if there's nothing in it for them, they won't do shit.
I would like to hire one "real" actor/celebrity too(one that would work fairly cheap--I know someone who would work for $1,000--I'd guess that's about the cheapest you can get a celebrity to work? I'd want him to have a fairly big part--not the main character or anything but I'd wanna give him quite a few lines & have him in the film alot).... that also might convince more people to come.