Nick Kornev

Maybe start shooting with the money you already have and then use some shot footage to make people believe that you're working on a really quality stuff? It really helps - becomes much easier to convince the kickstarter crowd that they are making an interesting investment.

Yeah, it'll work, just don't forget about the slate =)

Get yourself (rent can be cheaper) Zoom H4n or some other decent portable recorder with XLR inputs, a boom mic and a slate for syncing audio to video. You're ready to go =) Of course you can also add a couple of lav mics to your chain, but you'll have only one spare input on your recorder (which is ok for ENG work, but somehow I feel you're not going to shoot a documentary on 8mm =)