I can honestly say that if I had 15grand to make a feature I wouldn’t waist money on shooting it 16mm,
I think it would be a logistical nightmare, stuff you have no control over and every time film is involved it gets really expensive, cost of film, film processing, colour grading, film to digital transfer, for editing, and then a digital to 35mm transfer to top it all off, then when you finally get a distribution deal your gonna need to transfer it back to digital anyway for digital projection and digital dvd and digital download.
Basically you need to be really nuts about film not to go for digital, especially with advent of the new "Digital Film" cameras ie DSLR’s on the market, even the pros would argue with you over this.
Go here… listen to the pros talk about it.
http://www.zacuto.com/shootout
…and watch all three episodes, then come back and tell me you would waste 15k on 16mm film.
Unless you spent the last 10 years working with film and know all of its ins and outs?