can someone point me to a good starting point for shooting in sunlight (daylight)? i've pretty much nailed down available light shooting, but funny enough, find it challenging to shoot during daylight...because the LCD is really hard to gauge in direct sunlight.

shutter should still be 1/50 correct? iso i'm using 100. the only thing left is aperature. say i'm on a 50mm prime lens and i want to shoot at 1.8...everything is blown out. but when i adjust aperature to get correct exposure, my dof is shot to hell. i know i can get a ND filter, but how much will that help? am i wrong in assuming that shutter should stay locked at 1/50 when shooting 24fps? what else can i adjust to allow shallow dof and still maintain proper exposure during daylight shooting?

You need an adjustable ND filter... no other way... same way with standard video camera's...

shooting 1.8 in strong sunlight is not a good solution. The focusing will be too hard to control, especially using the rear LCD by itself. If shallow DOF is a must, move the distance between foreground or subject and its background and use ND's.

First thing you need is one of the LCD viewers like the IDCphotography.com or the Zacuto or Cavision. That turns your LCD into a decent viewfinder that you can use outside in the sun. I have the IDC viewfinder:
iDC Photo Store - Specialty gear for the photographer (http://www.idcphotography.com/kart/index.php?p=product&id=129&parent=31)
It has an adjustable diopter and is bolted to a sturdy plate that attaches to the bottom of the camera (the plate has additional 1/4-20 threaded holes for your tripod), and the arrangement is so solid you can pick up the camera by the viewer with no worry about it coming off. It's $199. The Zacuto is $400 and has a bigger eyepiece that I like but it attaches with doublesticky tape, which I don't like. Cavision has a very nice big one that attaches as solidly as the IDC but it has no adjustable diopter, which I need.

Second thing are some ND filters. An ND.9 (3 stops) will get you into the mid range of the lens at the 1/50 shutter speed which you need to shoot at if you're doing 24fps. If you want to open up more than that, try adding an ND.6 for another 2 stops. Or, as the above post suggested, you might try one of the variable ND filters. I've never used those so I don't know how they are.