I think that the effect you are looking for would be easier to do in post production. But a macro lense might work cause that will give you an extremely shallow depth of field.

I was looking at the T3, which is under $500.
For a DSLR, that's as close as you'll get to'cheap'.

Buy a t2i or a t3i and you will have some money left if you need to buy some lenses.

I've compared the two and in my opinion, I think you should go with the 60D. Its swivel screen and fast aperture are good keys for filming video, not to mention that it's considerably cheaper than the 7D. Though of course, go with your preferences and what you feel most comfortable with; you'll feel more familiar and less confused if you do it this way .

How do you connect the canon 550d to a mac? You see, I tried it earlier, I was using a battery grip (I haven't got an av adaptor yet, so I thought I could use the extra power) and it worked for a bit, then the grip died. The camera was fine, chances are the grip I got was just a one off dud one, but I'm a bit worried I did something wrong. Are you supposed to connect the camera to the computer, THEN turn the camera on? Because thats what I did last time, I'm using the same battery grip again too (just a replacement one). Anyone know? Thanks.

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OBJECTION!
The 350d (My DSLR) is only £120 second hand. The 450d with live view is only £170. You guys really don't need the 60D's etc. for brickfilming. I would say those semi-professional ones are good for photography business+, but remember folks it's the man behind the kit.

Go with the 60D. And one thing about the focus points on the 7D: It's more than just higher focus point amount...the focus points have highly advanced tracking and have more cross type sensors. Their are also other advanced focus abilities that the 7D has. But if you are just doing video, focus points are not generally something you don't need to think about a lot. I WOULD get the 60D over the T3i because of the more color options. It not only uses the white balance presets, but also Kelvin white balance where you can set the specific color you want. If you have to change the colors in post...the pixels will start to look bad. I've experienced this myself. The 60D also has other manual features that are found to be very essential for video work. I absolutely LOVE my articulating screen on my T3i. I use it more than I thought I would!

   

Hmm, all depends, if you want the space to seem smaller, which i guess is what you want, use longer focal lenghts, maybe a 50mm? and then just move it way from the set. You could also try even longer distances, but that would require a bigger room, since higher focal distances usually has a long focusing distance IE: you need to be far away from the set. Ofcourse, if your set is already claustophobic and small, maybe try a wide-angle lens, so people can see just how small the room really is.

Because no one answered your question, I thought I would! I use the EOS Utility when animating for frame capture and I love it. Once I've taken my shots I stick them into Windows Live Movie Maker and do my timing there. For the black bars in my films, I use Microsoft Expression's overlay feature and simply use a widescreen Matte that I created in PS as my overlay. I hope to eventually get a stop motion software but until then I think the EOS Utility combined with something like Live Movie Maker is great. Sure it's simple, but it gets the job done.

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