Dallas College is turning one of its North Lake Campus classrooms into a high-tech film set to help students land jobs paying $65,000 to $85,000 a year, just as college leaders and industry partners say North Texas is cementing its place as the state’s production center.
The community college’s new Vū virtual production soundstage is built around a towering LED wall and real time 3D environments. It will train students for jobs in growing demand on film and television sets, in corporate studios, and on teams building video games and other immersive experiences across North Texas.
North Texas has become a leader in the Texas film industry, bringing more jobs that pay a living wage. The Dallas College training platform comes as the expanded Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program is driving even more work to Dallas.
At an unveiling Wednesday, Dallas College Chancellor Justin Lonon framed the soundstage as part of a broader strategy to prepare students for North Texas’ growing workforce.
Dallas College plans to expand its downtown El Centro Campus using a $1.1 billion bond approved by voters in 2019. The expansion could train more local talent while helping recruit and retain key employers. That includes finance companies coming to Dallas to participate in the upstart Texas Stock Exchange Group known as Y’all Street.
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Dallas Film Commissioner Katie Schuck said Dallas hosted 277 film projects last year, a 74.2% increase from the previous year.
Dallas also hosted 167 commercials and corporate shoots, 22 episodic productions, 20 documentaries and six feature films, Schuck said. That work generated 625 production days, hired 3,747 local crew members, and brought more than $133 million in direct production spending to the local economy.
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Those figures likely understate the industry’s footprint, Schuck said, because they include only productions that chose to report their data.
Preparing for ‘Y’allywood’
Lonon said the college system has its sights set on preparing residents for “Y’allywood.”
“We’re going to need trained people to go into those jobs,” he said.
The soundstage allows filmmakers to shoot actors and scenes in front of a high resolution LED wall instead of a green screen or physical sets. The wall can display locations in real time, synchronized with cameras and lighting, so the background shifts naturally as the lens moves.
The setup allows students to practice running cameras and lights, building digital environments and managing virtual production workflows.
“We focused really specifically on the virtual production component because that is the newest, most innovative technology,” said Ahava Silkey-Jones, vice provost of the School of Creative Arts, Entertainment and Design at Dallas College.
Dallas College North Lake Campus Information Center Manager Rosailand Patterson tests out a new soundstage on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Irving.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
The college also plans to host weekday classes and weekend or evening workshops to help upskill residents who are already working in the industry, Silkey-Jones said.
‘High-wage, low-barrier-of-entry’ industry
Putting this inside a public college matters because productions are already adopting the technology. Schuck estimated there are about a dozen LED volume systems across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, from large stages at Trilogy Studios and South Side Studios to smaller walls scattered through North Dallas, Plano, Richardson and Carrollton.
Schuck also said the expanded Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program is driving work to Dallas. Lawmakers last year approved $1.5 billion for the initiative over the next decade.
That’s good news for residents, she said, calling film a “high-wage, low-barrier-of-entry” industry. She also said the city’s many corporate headquarters and other businesses need both internal video production and external branding.
“A lot of the time, they’re hiring external agencies that are Dallas-based in order to do that,” she said.
For Dallas-based partner DHD Films, which helped design and power the installation, the classroom serves as a workforce strategy and a teaching tool. Founder and creative director Shezad Manjee said the Dallas-Fort Worth area is already becoming a hub for large scale productions, pointing to the Taylor Sheridan led studio complex in Fort Worth that will host the series Landman and other projects.
DHD Films Director of Photography Diego Noriega frames Shezad Manjee, the founder and creative director, during a soundstage debut on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, at Dallas College North Lake Campus in Irving.
Angela Piazza / Staff Photographer
Manjee also said that while shows grab attention, large employers who are exploring or installing their own LED stages for in-house video need crews who understand how to light, shoot and build assets for those environments.
“The work is already coming here. It is not a hypothesis,” Manjee said. “The question is whether the jobs go to local talent or we fly them in. This soundstage at Dallas College allows us to keep those jobs homegrown.”
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.