David Bell wanted to be rock star, but he kept working the sound console.

After 20 years of being a touring audio engineer, he purchased his own lighting rig and started working shows. In 2007, he bought Stage Right Lighting, a local production and event lighting company.

Now, Bell has expanded Stage Right’s offerings with a new 3,000-square-foot multi-use studio space on Viking Drive in the Lynnhaven area of Virginia Beach. The original 600-square-foot draped studio is now mostly used as a green room, changing room or a staging area for larger productions.

The cutting-edge studio boasts a 60-foot by 30-foot cyclorama wall with a 24-foot trim height. The curved wall is designed to create the illusion of an infinite background, which is ideal for seamless backdrops, large-scale photo and video shoots or immersive projection environments.

The video wall sets the studio apart from others because it can now compete with larger production houses, Bell said. It enables extended reality or XR technology, which creates a virtual environment to create real-time scene changes and dynamic lighting.

“We have needed a large space like this to produce content,” said Matt Trygar, co-owner of Flagship Visuals, a Virginia Beach video production company and client of Stage Right Lighting. “Through the use of this massive LED wall and specialized computer software, we now have the ability create whatever environment we can dream up: from the top of Mount Everest to Hawaii beaches at sunset or a thunderstorm in Times Square. Whatever your story needs, we can make it happen.”

Video walls used for scenery not only cut production costs, Bell said, but they eliminate the need for green screens and additional post-production editing.

“We chose to invest in ROE LED video walls because they’re the premier technology,” Bell said. “They’re not only good for displaying images to live audiences but also maintaining high enough resolution and processing speeds to serve as background video scenery for film production.”

He added that Stage Right Lighting can add special effects, such as fog and snow, to interact with the subjects being filmed.

Giving brands the ability to increase the amount of content that can be produced in a day of filming is another massive game-changer, Trygar said. By changing the environment on the LED wall and tweaking the lighting and roll camera, creatives can create a whole new look.

The same technology that has been used in Hollywood to create shows like “Star Wars: The Mandalorian” has now been brought to the 757, Bell said. Video walls are also used to give the illusion of high-speed, dangerous-looking scenes.

“Video walls of this quality have been unavailable to Hampton Roads filmmakers until now,” Bell said. “We wanted to build a studio big enough that local and regional companies could use our technology and not have to travel to cities like Atlanta, New York or Nashville. We want to be a creative hub and bring your vision to life.”

For more information, visit stagerightva.com .