If you have passion for film making and that all you can see yourself doing, I would recommend to go to school. I'm almost 33 years old and had the chance to do this and decided to do a business course instead because of the fact I thought I would be more likely to get a job in that field. I now...
If your looking for Shadow Dept of Field I would go for a DSLR. I used a Canon Vixia for a few years and it got great HD video but wasn't great in low light and no DOF. I later upgraded to a Canon 5D MK2, Which is great. Kinda expensive but there are other DSLR models that are just as good and...