Justifying LED Volumes vs. Location for Indie Films, Any Budget AI Saviors?

Hey everyone,

I’m Terrence, a DIT mostly working on indie narrative stuff. My last project was shot on a V-RAPTOR XL with some SkyPanel S60-Cs, and we were always fighting light and location permits. I'm looking ahead to a sci-fi short, and the idea of an LED volume keeps coming up, especially for some of the more elaborate environment shots.

My gut tells me the upfront cost of a volume rental is going to dwarf what we’d spend on a few weeks of traditional location shooting. We already have a decent camera package, usually an ALEXA Mini, and I'm pretty good at stitching together our workflow with proxies and dailies, but this is a different beast.

For those who've gone the LED volume route on a truly indie budget, how did you justify the cost over traditional locations? And crucially, are there any AI tools out there you've found genuinely save significant money or time, making a volume more feasible? I’m talking about real budget relief, not just fancy bells and whistles.

Thanks for any insights!