Re: Building/Creating a Medieval Peasent Village

I think you will find that the costs of building practical sets on location and doing it all virtually in post, in a really quality and believable way, wind up the same. You're just incurring different types of costs and either front-loading or back-loading the budget. The savings, if any, comes from working in the middle somewhere.

My first thought would be to create a few generic set pieces that can be combined in various ways, and shoot effects "plate" shots where the camera is locked down and the "houses" are placed in multiple spots and photographed first. This gives you some reality-based stuff to composite with in post, skipping the costs of digital modeling, and it gives you real elements for digital set extensions, shot in the the real natural lighting conditions. That will look real because the components WERE real. Stuff in the far background might just be 2-d flat canvas; that's worked in movies for a hundred years. Actors always do better when they have at least a partial environment to work with and not just a green void.

Don't forget that the best money saving tool for you is a good and camera-accurate pre-vis storyboarding job. Script it with an eye for reducing visual complexity and number of unique locations to the bare essentials. Only pay for what is going to be seen by the lens. Control your angles, including shooting high and low-angles, and you reduce the amount of environment that needs to be replicated. Shooting tight, with narrow DOF reduces visible details.