Commercial Lighting Cinematography In A Casino (with Gaffer Jason Penza) | SC Pictures

Hey everybody, this is Stuart. Today I'm here with Jason Penza, who's an amazing gaffer who lives somewhere near Atlantic City, New Jersey. Jason, how you doing today?

I'm good, man. Thanks for having me.

So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about a project that we did together at the Borgata in Atlantic City. And just a little background, I had never worked with Jason before, so this That was our first outing together, so that's what we're going to talk about. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, so I'm a gaffer obviously based in Jersey. I primarily do— actually, I really do a little bit of everything. I do a lot of features, a lot of corporate work, I do docs, I do social stuff. I mean, really, I light really anything I can.

Well, a couple, couple— and the other thing I wanted to ask, and just you being a gaffer, like, do you have a core crew that works with you, like your best boys and all that?

I do. So, uh, throughout this year, actually, I've been privileged of finding, um, some of the best people that I've ever worked with. I consider them my family. Um, there's about 6 to 8 of us. So I've been, been looking for a team forever, and I'm so happy to finally find one. That's been the best part of 2025 for me.

That's great, because we feel the same way. I mean, when we work a lot, you work with the same people, and it becomes like you don't have to, you don't have to explain everything. What we're gonna do is we're gonna show a quick reel from, from the job.

Great.

And then we have, I think, 4 or 5 lighting setups that we have decks for that you're gonna explain how you did it. And then of course, I know a lot of people might want to hear about what kind of gear you use, but let's just say—

Sure.

Let's save that for the end.

You got it.

Yeah, so at this point, yeah, let's, let's, uh, let's roll that first clip. Yeah, let's look at the first lighting setup, and I'll give you a little preamble to it, and then I'm gonna give it to you. So this shot— This, I know you like this one. So this was in the series.

I do.

And so if you look at that picture in the bottom left corner, that is from our scout that was just, you know, that's just—

That's sick.

It's in there.

Yeah, totally.

Obviously in the top right, that's the final, the final color corrected version. And that's your drawing in the top left. So why don't you tell us a little about, a little bit about how you lit it?

So the thing with, like, casinos specifically is obviously color is everything. So when we arrived on location, you know, the color that kind of really spoke out to me the most was red. You could see, like, in the casinos and the slot machines and everything, red is very much, very prominent. And I remember you and I had a conversation about, you know, the slot machine. Do you want to feel that slickerness on his face? So I programmed a light that was playing on his face to really accentuate like a slot machine rolling through or whatever.

Right.

But I really felt like in this one, uh, compared to the other things that we were getting, I was like, this is a space that we could really lean into color and not feel like we're getting too, like, too crazy. Um, because casinos have color everywhere you go, there's loud noises, it's very, it's very captivating. So something I really wanted to try was color contrast and using some blue with some red. So obviously red was already established in this environment, so I said, okay, let's— what's a good contrasting color that would be fun to really make our lead talent here pop? And blue seemed to be the best choice. Obviously, you know, we had a dolly move and everything, so we had a light a little wide, um, but you know, it just was how do we fill the space How do we really accentuate the red that's already in here? And then how do we make it a little moody with some blue? Um, and, you know, really bring it in that we are in a bustling, colorful casino.

Absolutely. And, you know, when you said that, I didn't even notice that, you know, the flickering light, you know, I figured it was really from the slot machine, but that's a really nice touch that you put in there.

When I was debating about how to do it, I— we had a small Helios tube and I could have had it just like flicker on and off, but what I did was I did more like random levels of flickering. So sometimes it was like a low flicker or a high flicker or a medium level, and it would randomly assign it to make it really feel like something was happening in front of him. Um, we could have played the slot machine naturally, but sometimes you just want that little bit of extra control, a little bit of like oomph to really sell it.

Right, right. Well, that's really cool. Let's look at the full setup now. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about what lamps you used where?

Yeah, so for me, the, the first thing that I always, uh, the first 2 lights that I always pick at no matter what, um, is my 2 tried and trues, which is a Titan Tube and a Nanlite Forza 60C. Those 2 lights are my hardest working lights by far, um, and I knew that these would be perfect for this setup because they are RGB, so I could do any color that I want. I Wanted to use a Titan tube as an edge because it's very much a neon-y looking kind of fixture. Like, it just makes sense conceptually, especially with casinos that have all like the, like the light strips that go through them and everything. Obviously the name of the game is also edging. So we had, you know, a nice blue edge from 60C on, you know, over to the right and a white color temperature coming back just to light up the space and feel it just bring up everything.

Wow.

Then I use these Aputure Nova, you know, P300s to just Push that color, really feel that color in. But honestly, that casino did do a lot of work. Like, there was a lot of, a lot of work being done by those slot machines.

Yeah, because there's not a lot of large, large fixtures in here.

No, they like keeping it dark. Like, they like keeping it dark. And then, but, but even with us, like, we didn't have to go into big heavy units because it was all color and it was very intimate and we were just Accentuating the dark, right? Well, we didn't have to light the space.

Yeah. And, and as a director, it's like a lot of times we're just trying to accentuate it, but it's when you get into subtleties and nuance, which is what really separates somebody that's really a good gaffer from somebody that's not. So that was, that was done well. Yeah. Let's go to the next shot now. This shot, I mean, I know you had mentioned that, yeah, this is not that interesting. Um, as a, as a lighting setup. So this is in their dining room, but yet from where I sit, seeing that bottom left corner, which was our scouting picture, and what the, what the authentic, um, you know, lighting is, it's kind of really— it's harder than you think to light people in that scene and to keep the feel of the restaurant.

Yeah, for sure. Uh, it's funny, after having that conversation with you, I did sit on this a little bit more, and I remember thinking like, You know, this was one of our more challenging locations, um, because of that depth. I mean, if you remember, we were trying to figure out how to get some light from the back and push, and it was like, you know, that was our— we were struggling a little bit with it, but we figured it out. Um, well, plus—

It's so wide.

Yeah, it's wide. Yeah, so wide. Um, for this one, you know, my tried and true is a good overhead top-down light. I mean, you can't beat it. There's a reason why they're used all the time. You make it nice and soft. really just, you know, use that tablecloth to bounce up, really gets this beauty fill on the face. I mean, you could see there's obviously shadow, but, you know, she looks fantastic. He looks fantastic. Without really much work, you're able to get a good base layer. You know, we added some tubes in for fill and we gave her a little soft edge. And then honestly, same thing like this space. This space was already kind of lit and pretty. We just accentuated again. We added a little backlight to just kind of lift the space. But like, this is where like gorgeous architecture really comes in. And like, you see this beautiful wood You know, slat, like, you know, it— we didn't have to do much. It was simple. And simple is not always a bad thing. Simple sometimes is a good thing.

Where I sit, the biggest challenge, like your top-down light, is, is you don't want that table glowing and their faces, you know, being darker. And so the, the, the balance really is like, how do you keep them lit but that white tablecloth not blow out, you know?

For sure. And that's like when, like where these Titan Tubes, for example, come in because where we had them is we had them low. You can't really tell in the diagram, but they were low shooting up. So we were able to kind of not light the table.

Got it.

Uh, so the, the top light did a lot of the heavy lifting for them obviously, and for the table. But then we added the Titan Tubes up firing to really get the rest of them filled in. I like to make the, the brightest thing in the frame to be the thing that you wanna look at. Which in this case is them. Your eye is drawn to her.

Right, right. Yeah.

Godox F600Bi is my go-to overhead light. It's a 4x4, so it's massive. It's 600 watts. It's huge. And we added a little skirt around it, uh, that way it kept the light really controlled and really only on the table and on that. We didn't want it spilling all over the floor and everything else because a skirt basically allows it to only light what is You know, within the confines of the skirt. Titan Tubes, you know, we had what are called DOP Choice snap bags on them, which is basically making them basically a softbox, um, that we— makes it nice and soft and allows us just to add a little bit extra love into that, to their faces and skin tones and stuff like that, to bring them up. Like I said, what you're saying, those Titan Tubes were, were below table level, or They were right at table level aimed upwards, so that way when the light naturally hit, it fell off before it hit the table. So we weren't lighting the table with them.

Perfect.

Because if we lit the table with them, now we're lighting the table just as much, and then what could happen is you're looking at a white sheet, you know, a white tablecloth, so your eye would be naturally drawn to that. You and I both were focused on lighting them.

Right. And the one thing that, that you're not showing here that people need to, to be aware of Is all that depth behind it. I think we threw a little nuancey light, you know, to try to bring up the background because when we lit them to even a level that, you know, to, for an f/2.8, um, you know, the, the background kind of started to fall off dark and we really wanted to bring that background to be part of the, part of the picture. You know.

There's that balance, right? Of where do we get the with depth of field, but also exposure level, right? So you definitely knew in this case that you wanted that nice depth of field, but you also didn't want like super, super out of focus either. Like, so a 2.8 is like a great or opened up f-stop that gives you a lot of light, but we had to just lift up a little bit, but we had to hide it. That's the secret sauce. So you had to hide it to not make it look like we're lighting it. You know, you had—

Right.

That roof was nice because it was slatted, like it had like the wood beams or whatever. So we were able to hide some lights in there and, really make it just lift the space. But also it did cut light for us, so it didn't spill into our set as well. So we kind of got lucky with this space.

Exactly. And the one thing, you know, when you say 2.8, I mean, it's pretty wide, but, you know, we had 2 people also interacting, so we want to— we wanted to keep them both in focus. And then the challenging thing that we also had is they really wanted to show the food. That tomahawk steak is a big deal. And it's branded and it's like, okay, God, we gotta keep that sharp, you know, or at least as close to sharp as possible as well. So, um, nice.

As you start going, as you start going down though, like, cuz like your natural instinct is, okay, f/2.8, f/2.8 might be, if you wanna see more things in focus, you gotta stop down.

Right.

But as you stop down, you're getting less light. So then we get, then you have to start bringing more and more light in. You're now, you're losing your depth of field too. Right. So that's this balance of like, okay, where is the perfect zone of focal plane? exposure and depth of field that really sells the image. I think the f/2.8 in this case was probably the best option for us.

Cool, cool, cool, cool. Nice. And actually that ended up, you know, what we all thought would be, um, kind of a, a difficult shot in terms of acting, in terms of, you know, how do you, how do you really feature a tomahawk steak with a, with a super hot talent? I think they really played it up and brought a little bit of a smile to that scene, which really made it fun in the end. And let's go to the next slide here. Okay, so this— there's a venue that they have that seats— I don't know what they said, if it was 800 or 1,000 or 2,000.

Something like that.

But we didn't have people and we had to make it look full. We were looking for angles to really minimize the background, or how did we How would we make it look full? So that's when you see the fog and the backlight. You know, that was, you know, some input that I gave to Jason. And this is one of the shots from it which actually turned out, I think, pretty well. And why don't you talk about how you attacked this?

The nice thing about this location was that we also had the house there with us, so we were able to use some of their lights and accentuate on top of what I was already doing because This would've been a very difficult space to just light with just me, meaning we need a lot of time. Like, we would've— we did not have the time in the schedule to do it. And that's something that as a gaffer, I always had to think about, is with the time allowed, how can I light something? Because I could spend all day easy, but—

I never give you that.

We can't. No, it never happens. And, and honestly, it would probably be a bad thing for that to happen because I work better under pressure. So I, I'd rather have confines and figure it out within that, in that zone and not just spend 6 hours lighting. But for this one, you know, the flare is the name of the game for this. It hides so much.

Right.

A little bit of fog, a little bit of texture in there. I mean, if you obviously stare at this, you could tell, but you would really have to look to really be able to see that it's empty. 'Cause we did light it in a way that we obviously focused on the people there. But we also did— we kind of slowly lit everything else around them, so it's kind of like more of a gradient.

Let's go to the lighting setup. Let me see if you could start to explain that, because I, I think here darkness was also your friend, right?

Yeah, in this case I love the darkness. In this case, that's when I really wanted to really lean in on this. So, um, the one thing I really like to do when you have a stage is to add some kind of fun light to it that is not just like an edge. So my, one of my tricks is you take a bunch of Titan Tubes and you tape the middle either with white or black, depending on the look you wanna do. You know, they look like they're part of the stage. I mean, obviously someone in our industry is gonna know they're Titan Tubes, but I actually kind of surprised how good they did come out.

You know what, now that you say that, you're absolutely right. I do see the seam, but you know, I was like, okay, but they look so good there.

Also allows for more color contrast in this case. Um, so it was a fun way to like, you know, really accentuate this performer here, give her a practical that just added so much love and care to the image. This is lighting depth, you know, we're not just lighting them and her, you know, we're adding layers here.

Right.

And if we just had the edge fall off, like, you know, just no lights there, it would've been a boring stage. Not to say that, you know, Sometimes that might be what you want, but when you're thinking— when I think performing music, you want color, you want fun.

So basically you lit the performer from what would be front light from the camera a little bit as well, right? So she wasn't pitch black.

Yeah, yeah. So we, so we obviously, we wanted to still see the performer, right? Like, it wasn't— we were focused on the audience, obviously, but you need— we needed to see something like in front of the camera. So we, we basically backlit her. Um, how we would describe it, we backlit her. Um, but we also added a light behind camera just to lift up the atmosphere, lift up the space a little bit, just so it wasn't black. In this case, we were more or less focused on the details. We were lighting the details versus just lighting the grand space. So, you know, we added the 2 Nova panels on the side. We use them a lot in the show, um, to really add color. Um, and then I had my spotlights firing into the lens. I literally remember Elliot, your DP, was on the lens and I was aiming it right at him. That way it hid whatever we could, like your suggestion, use that flare to hide it. And if I remember correctly, I'm pretty sure we were on— we had, uh, my best boy, uh, our swing Jeremy was on one of the lights and was operating it.

What about those Leicos in the back? Were they—

That was the house. They, they were the house ones. So we— so what I did, so I talked to the board op and I was like, hey, Here's— he gave us some flexibility. We couldn't change too much, but we did have some of— we did have some flexibility. I said, let's get some, like, you know, your standard Leicos lying all around the space. Like, that's—

Yeah.

And it was funny, a fun conversation that we had with him is that he's so used to lighting the stage.

Right.

He doesn't light the audience. So a lot of the lighting had to change for him because I was giving suggestions and he was assuming I meant the stage. I was like, no, like, I wanna light the people. in the audience. Like, I want to— I don't want to light the stage. If anything, that's the last thing I want to do. I only want to focus on the people in the audience, which is such a— these grids are designed— they're obviously, they're, you know, they're movers, as we call them, but they're designed to go towards the stage. So we had a little trickery, but, you know, it worked out great.

So basically, so it was those Nanolites that were banging the lens, right?

Yeah.

I love— like, I'm a big, I'm a big fan of having somebody that could ballyhoo the lights to just kind of get us some flair here and there. And I think it added the realism, you know, to that shot because, you know, my biggest fear is it's like, oh my God, this is a big empty space. How are we going to make it look real?

The other thing too is that these kind of setups are nice because you can see the lights in the shot. Like, you can— you're allowed to see them. Like, the spotlights embrace it. Like, we don't have to hide them. And, you know, it just Adds to the realism in this case.

Nice. And it was a fun shot to do.

Yeah, this was fun.

Cool. So let's go to the next one. A little gaming. You always need gaming. Now, I apologize here. Our scouting pictures, these tables were covered in plastic, so it wasn't really real. But I think that image of the woman in the bottom left is really before you started adding lights. And here again, similarly to, say, the restaurant, I wanted to still have that depth, so you can't overlight the table. So one of the things I was saying to Jason is like, we want to maintain the depth in the casino and the feel of the whole property, but yet we need to get light in their faces.

This one is interesting because if you notice the style, this, we actually introduced everything that we did up to this point. And if I remember correctly, We shot this after everything we've done so far, so we brought in the color, we brought in the overhead. This wasn't— this was literally like a mixed bag of all the tricks that we learned and did on this show and brought together. Um, so, you know, we had the overhead, which you have to have, right? Like, it's just a good light, especially for something like this. Um, and, you know, we really wanted to just show these faces, show the, the win, but we got to have color. Can't just be plain old white. This is in a casino. So we brought back our colors again, and we brought back the blue-purple, we brought back the pink. Um, but something that we added in this one that we did not do in other ones is that I actually added 2 spotlights to really accentuate him. I wanted to sandwich him. I wanted to feel the 3 colors— our, our base, I think, was 5600 Kelvin, our blue, and our pink. So if you look at him, you see 3 lights on his face, right? Um, something that I really wanted to add because it also just gives him a really cool dynamic look.

So let's go to the big lighting diagram here. So your 2 lights on Each, each side was lit a different color then?

Yeah, we could, we, we could have did a like a same color thing, but I think it adds a little bit more visual interest to see 3 colors. Something that I do as a gaffer when I can, when I can, I love to have 3 colors in my shots. Now typically when I say that, I normally mean like a tungsten, a daylight, and like some other color, right? Whether it's like a sodium vapor or green or like fluorescent, right? But in this case, I had a lot more options. 'Cause I had all color. So I wanted to do 3 colors here. And the thing with color is that you could easily overdo it and you could add so much color to it. And it looks— we're getting into like a music video territory. There's a beauty in the balance of—

Yeah.

We still live in this world. And you know, when you're in the— when you're at these black dark tables, you're, you're not really seeing the light that we have, meaning you're seeing all the color 'cause that's just naturally how it looks. But we're, we're also, we are shooting a corporate product, right?

Right.

We do need to make it look lit. Like, we can't just have it just be the moody color in this instance. So we wanted to do something that just made it look artsy with a little bit of taste of corporate, you know.

And I, I will say, you know, having, um, done work for a lot of hotels and casinos, you know, you could tell— I mean, it's harder than you think to make those table shots look really natural. And I think you did a really good job there balancing it. Like the, the colored, uh, gels or the lighting, however we dialed it in, it didn't look garish at all. I mean, it looked subtle, it looked realistic. Um, and that's a really fine, fine line to walk, you know.

And also something that I've, I've dealt with in the past, I'm sure you have probably way more than me, is that sometimes corporations are afraid of color. Something that I always present is like, hey, uh, what if we use your brand color? Like, what if we sneak it in? And sometimes this is not something they want to do, and I, I completely understand that. But in this case, you know, we did— we want— we, we really wanted to do it. And, and I think it also just adds a layer of— it, it makes you want to be there. And that's honestly, for the Brigata, that's what they want. They want you to want to be there.

Absolutely. Which brings us to— let's move on to this next one, which, um, I will just preface this with, this was the last shot of a 4-day shoot. And I think this started at 11 PM or something.

Yeah, this was a late one.

This was a late one. And if you look at that bottom, the photograph on the bottom left, that's a scouting pic. And honestly, there's not a lot going on there. And the truth is this whole setup was not planned. This was a last one that we put in there that, of course, the client absolutely loved. Um, Jason, uh, did ask me, he's like, okay, what am I going to do here? And, and what I would love you to talk about is the nuance, like what we had, those, those lights that were coming up from the floor. So you see the gradation on the walls and again, the different color, but yeah, why don't, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you approach this?

This was the shot. If I don't know if you remember, I came up to you and I was like, Hey, can we just like, can we go crazy? Can we just like, let's paint. Let's paint with some light. Let's have some fun. And this was an example of like, we weren't planning for this. There was not really, the scout was like that day, if I remember correctly. Like we didn't know this existed. So we walked in there, we said, how can we make this space look a little fun? And like I just said recently, color. So the thing that we both wanted to really accentuate was how do we make these boring sheers Look fun. Like, and, and not in this shot, but this was also a party scene too that also took place in this environment. So we just leaned into it. We said, let's make it like a club. Let's make it feel like it's a VIP special suite with like club lighting.

Yeah.

So we brought back the 2 colors again. We really leaned into purple and pink on this one, uh, like a bluish pink, I should say. And we lit the background. And the fun thing about this, uh, I don't know if you noticed this, but Because we were shooting on an angle, at a 45-degree angle, we have a perfect divide on that wall that shows color over, almost like in like photography, like you use like a black, like a backdrop for it.

Oh yeah.

We kind of made our own. Yeah, like we kind of, we like, I, I, happy accident.

Uh, well, let's go to the lighting diagram and, and, and because I mean, I think there's a, there were a lot of, a lot of instruments in here and it doesn't—

Oh yeah.

Like it was lit. But there—

no, there are a lot of lights. This was our biggest setup by far. So what we did was we lined all of our Helios tubes around the room, um, and we actually did them not on the floor, but we actually did them on the windowsill because hotel casino windowsills usually are about 6 inches or so. Um, so we basically backlit the curtains, um, that way we could hide what was going on around outside us. So the Borgata, you know, has casinos outside of it, and in this case, we didn't really want to show other casinos. We wanted to focus on Right. So we, so we, we, I remember having a conversation with you and you were like, you know, we gotta hide this. So we did backlight. You can't really see outside. You could tell it's night, but it's all you needed in this case. The thing that I really, really wanted to try was we hid spotlights on the ground and I aimed them up. You could see that our, our male talent here has this beautiful edge of the opposite color Coming from that side, but it basically just separates him from the background, but not just like with a normal backlight. Like, you know, we, we use the color, and because he's on the pink side, we were able to use the blue to backlight him.

I will say, I think the biggest challenge is when you really try to get, like, in a small room with a lot of lamps, like, how do you isolate the lights? And because we really wanted to isolate the lights so they all did something, but it's hard because you're on top of each other, you know.

Yeah, so normally you say distance is your friend, right? But in this case, we actually used the couch to separate. Um, the couch became basically a barrier for us from between those— the Helios tubes that are around the room, but then also allowed us to add the, you know, hide the spotlights aimed up. Um, also, he was also aiming down with the photo, so I thought it was kind of cool to have the light like kind of in his face. Then also something fun is that we did have a white light. We had one. And I think what's cool about it is that it— you got, I guess, like I said before, you gotta still light the space. However, in this case, we did a Leco and we just did her.

Okay.

We just did her white dress, which I think draws your eye right in, right to where you want to see, which is the two of them. Also just add some stylisticness to it. It's not just like we're lighting them. It's a cut. It's a little bit of a sliver.

Interesting. That's, that's it. That's a really nice subtle touch you did there. We did this shot and I was sure they were gonna put the kibosh on it. They weren't gonna like it, you know, and they love it. So Jason, I think, I think what, what you've shown us there is really, really, um, cool, really educational. Like for someone like me being a director, like I learned from gaffers and I learned a lot of nuance and subtlety from what you did. The one thing I wanted to ask you too, if you would quickly touch on is, so the one thing that sometimes gaffers have challenges with, with say with us is the fact that we're always trying to do stills as well.

Ah, yes.

So I will— I usually bring in a little strobe, you know, to— which I need to freeze it, but yet I got to balance it with the continuous light that you guys are bringing in. So can— yeah, just tell us a little bit about how you manage that.

Yeah, because, you know, I typically light for video, which is a whole different world than lighting for stills. So in this case, you know, I had a lot of conversations with your techs And I said, mimic this. Let's let— I'll do the heavy lifting. Add your strobe in to get that little bit of photo flare that you need. I've been on jobs where the photographers say, turn off your lights, dude. I don't want your stuff. I want my lights. But I think for speed as well as efficiency, um, and my lights were bright enough that we were able to just kind of do a nice balance of the both. You know, we just slowed down your strobes so they weren't too overbearing.

Yeah.

Um, and but also, you know, we kind of like took— we took— we learned from each other a little bit, you know.

And, and our special sauce is I don't want to overlight it. I mean, it, it's again back to nuance. And I think, you know, so the challenge is to find a great partner, is to see eye to eye on the nuance and, and, and to bring it up on a screen and all feel comfortable. And, and the thing not to forget is to do it With speed on command, because every day we were looking at— we had a lot of multiple setups and we were flying through these days.

And something that I, I, I— it's important to mention as a gaffer is that my job is to light for you. Whether I think— what I think ultimately doesn't matter at the end of the day. I'm— I have to try to read your mind, figure out what kind of style you want. I give input, but ultimately it's your image at the end of the day. So Having a gaffer that can unload a little bit of that weight from you allows you to focus on talent and composition and the other things, because you know in the back of your mind, I don't got to worry about light, he's got me covered, right? And that, that could be a huge freeing thing for DPs and directors.

Well, and the one thing for sure is I don't want to make it that you have to read my mind. Hopefully we could communicate.

For sure. I know, I know. The, the— but the idea of it is like, for me, I'm always thinking, okay, what, like, what is Stewart gonna want next? Like, what is— what's the one thing that he's gonna want to call for? Because I ultimately have to also bring the gear. And yeah, casinos aren't small spaces. They are very, very distant spots.

Right.

So it was a lot of trying to predict what lights are gonna come in, you know. And, you know, scouts help with this a lot, obviously. But the thing about our industry is that we have a lot of unplanned for things and You can't plan for all. So I had to kind of try to read your mind a little bit. And by day 2, I knew where you were. I knew what you wanted. I knew where you wanted to be. Um, so then it became less about just like trying to please you and became more of, here's some suggestions that are in line of what you want, right? What do you think?

Yeah. And by day 4— by day 3, I mean, it was like, yeah, just go.

We were cruising. We were I remember at one point, like, I think I, I came up to you and you were— I was like, hey, like, what do you want to do? Like, dude, just, just do it. I was like, say less, man. I got you. Don't worry.

Well, and that's kind of what you need because to your point, you know, um, you know, especially in doing advertising jobs, I mean, aside from having to communicate and connect with the talent, we also have the agency there that, that we're working with. We have the client there that we're working with. And of course, always, like, to your point, we always have the clock and it's like, it's a big day and we gotta end it on time or else it's something. Anyway, I think this has been a fantastic talk and I really appreciate it. So if people are looking for you, where could they find you?

Super simple. Instagram is my big one, JP_Gaffer. Can't get much more simpler than that.

Got it. Well, hey, on that note, I just wanna say thanks for Showing up today and sharing all these insights, and I'm sure a lot of people are gonna get a lot out of it.

Thanks for having me.

I look forward to our next job.

Yeah, man, I loved working with you. I cannot overstate how much fun it was. What a creative, fulfilling experience to do 4 days of just fun. It was awesome. Thanks so much again, man.

Thank you. Thank you.