Going along with the western I'm doing, there arises the issue of location. Michigan has sand dunes; desert looking enough. The main scene of this short is a shootout in a church though. Now, I'm sure we could pull off all interior shots inside old one room school houses, but the exterior shots need to out in the dunes. Meaning we might have to construct sets out there.

Anyone have experience doing this? Would it a) be WAAAY too much work? b) look fake if we only built the front of the building and did a straight on shot of it?

I'm starting to learn why genre movies are so rare in independent filmmaking!

instead of building sets, build one wall, and shoot through the windows looking out.

also if you set them up right, the "building" will cast a shadow on the ground, and you can use that to tie things together.

Thank you for your response. I decided to compromise and simplify, as most students have to do, and use tents instead - make the city full of desert nomads. Hopefully it'll be equally as effective.