You can do more than you think you can these dayS
If I were still making live action films I'd be pretty excited about the no budget possibilities or today... I wouldn't shoot it all on a green screen as real lighting/shadows/interaction with the subjects is important to me... BUT with a little 3d knowledge and a good grasp of compositing you can pull off some amazing stuff today... This was posted on a thread at cgsociety... will give you great ideas about what you can do with some matchmoving, camera mapping and comP... AND this is stuff ANY of you can do... with live action stuff the barrier was always the camera and ridiculous details aside DSLR optics pwn today and so do the images you can get off of them... So shoot with a DSLR and get smart and creative in comP and you can make a "big budget" film for nothing today... you just need some skills...
So start at Video Copilot BUT don't stop there or else the only effects you'll know how to do are the ones everyone else who goes there knows so then all yer films will have the same effects and like yeh... But Video Copilot is an AMAZING resource for filmmakers! I wish I had something like that when I started...
If you want some footage to play with to practice all the fancy comP stuff check this also posted to same thread
So if your doing or want to make live action films I'd say learn After Effects really well.. and add some basic 3d skills to start with C4d... if you haven't seen the magic of "Projection Man" in c4d check it out as your set extensions will never be the same ^ ^
But ya know I think it all leads back to true 3d animation anyway... as human actors and physical places have become less and less important to contemporary films... why shoot it all on a green screen just to be hampered by 2.5d restrictions? Why take all the trouble to get your flat live action actors in 3d scenes? Why take all this trouble to match the tiny amount of live action material to cg environments? As the quality of the new generation of humans "acting" has gotten so bad... I'd say they are not even actors but "reactors".... Since you or I can't get an awesome actor like Robert Downey Jr.... our options are usually reactor or a 3d character we do the acting for... well you know which one I chose....
I mean after watching the GARBAGE that are these films don't you think it would have been better to ditch the horrible acting caused by disoriented humans talking to tennis balls on the ends of sticks in an entire green room?
So if you got some real ACTORS get busy with your DSLR and comP skills and make somethin great!
Ok I get back to werK....Brought to you by professional weirdo M dot Strange.