What if... someone built a load of 24th Century sets to film on?

I went once, it was awesome.

 

Anyone have a way to contact Jeff Bezos?

 

Paul Allen would have been a good choice, except I just checked and he passed away last year.

 

hmmmmm

 

Well, if you're going to do an entire starship set, with all the various rooms, you're going to need a large, in-door space with heat/AC and high ceilings. You'd also need some office space, bathrooms, dressing areas and other spaces. I think this rules out a plain barn or warehouse. I think something like a defunct chain store, like Home Depot or a large Walmart, would be ideal, but that's probably going to cost in the millions, so that's probably out.

What might work, though, is a church (particularly one of those "Jesus Factory Warehouse (TM)" churches that don't look like a church) or a high school. Wait, here's a money pit--er--I mean school that might suit our purposes:

https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/200-Wanless-St-Buhl-MN/17590599/

It has both an auditorium and a basketball court, which combined should be big enough for a sizable set. It has bathrooms and, since it has a basketball court, presumable showers, and it has a kitchen and a cafeteria. It also seems to have a lot of class rooms that could be converted for storage, temporary lodging, et cetera. It also has seven garages and an in-door pool!

All for about $150K. Totally nothing shady about that little money for a facility of this size.

Might be a bit hard to get to, and you'd have to shut down during the winter, but hey, if you get a few thousand in donations every month, you could probably keep a set there indefinitely! (Travel costs would be a b*tch, though.)

But, in all seriousness, it might be easier to build a new facility for the amount of money you spend either renting or buying. If you buy or rent an existing structure, you're probably going to have to make expensive upgrades for sound proofing, lighting and any missing facilities you need.

Now, what might be more manageable is to find a house or small office building (or a small, well kept church) with one large room that you can convert into a green screen room. Then you just use virtual sets like Star Trek: Horizon. That way, you could pool resources with fans of other shows and movies (Star Wars, Marvel/DC, et cetera). Might even get support from local indie filmmakers.

Another idea is to simply down-size your ship. Do something like an Archer class ship, or a Runabout.

I was thinking something like this, where various people use a room in their house to keep a single room of a set, and the group would go to each house to film scenes in a particular room. Biggest down side I can see is that the guy housing your bridge set may one day decide he doesn't want to be a part of your group anymore, and you're all screwed. Jo Freeman would be spinning in her grave over the idea if she wasn't so inconveniently still alive.

That might be a little expensive up front, but a group could pool money to hire a lawyer for that. It's doable. Might actually be harder to coordinate days to shoot on various sets. What happens when the guy with the transporter room set is on vacation all month?