I lit films and television. Now I build the tools.
Three decades of storytelling with light. Twenty-two years as a gaffer on major motion pictures and prestige television built the craft. Then Slyyd — the tools the industry had never had, built from inside the profession. Everything since has been the same pursuit: light, and how it is controlled.
Biography
Twenty-two years on major productions means standing at the intersection of creative ambition and real operational pressure — broken communication, unexpected challenges, teams of every size. Leadership, empathy, and rapid learning are not abstract values in that environment. They are daily requirements. Teams scale when they are assembled for it: diversity of view, mutual respect, and the confidence to disagree professionally.
On Set
Professional gaffer and lighting department head on major studio productions. Two decades of features and prestige television: The Crowded Room (Apple TV+), You (Netflix), House of Cards (Netflix, David Fincher), Wormwood (Netflix, Errol Morris), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Fox Searchlight, Academy Award nominated), Younger (Paramount+, seven seasons), Pitch Perfect (Universal Pictures), After the Wedding (Sony Pictures Classics), Robot & Frank.
Clients included Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu, Paramount, Warner Bros., NBC/Universal, Sony, WME/Endeavor Content, and DreamWorks.
Member of IATSE Local 52, the New York local of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, covering lighting, grip, properties, and other mechanical roles on major motion pictures.
Slyyd
In 2014 I co-founded Lighticians Inc. and spent eight years building Slyyd — the industry’s first app-first lighting control platform, built originally for film and television lighting departments and expanded to include all forms of content creation. Twenty-two years on high-stakes, high-pressure sets deepen every instinct that product development demands — which problems deserve solving, which constraints are real, which team structures hold under pressure. The best outcomes came from pairing that depth with teams built for genuine diversity of view and practiced in professional disagreement.
In 2022 I joined Creamsource as SVP Slyyd, bringing the same product discipline into a new context: connected lighting infrastructure, control network frameworks, and wireless equipment.
Along the journey in 2016 I was named lead inventor on US Patent 9,961,738 B2: Modular Solid State Lighting Apparatus Platform.
- UX/UI Case Study
- Transforming Decades-Old Lighting Workflows into Intuitive App-First Control — Hologram Design
- Development Case Study
- Transforming On-Set Lighting Control from Analog to Digital — Nomtek
Recognition
The Hollywood Professional Association recognized Slyyd with its 2026 Award for Innovation in Production & Capture — honoring technology that materially advances professional filmmaking workflows.
In Print
- 2019
- Kogge, Michael. “After the Wedding: Secrets and Lies.” American Cinematographer, Sept. 2019.
- 2014
- “Exotic Entanglements.” American Cinematographer, June 2014.
- 2011
- Lester, Margot Carmichael. “Paper Trails.” International Cinematographers Guild Magazine, Sept. 2011.
- 2008
- Quezada, Roberto. “Tapeless.” FilmMaker Magazine, Spring 2008.
- 2005
- Argy, Stephanie. “Short Takes: An Artful Use of Fluorescents.” American Cinematographer, Nov. 2005.
Education
NYU Tisch School of the Arts. BFA Film Production, 2003. Honors Scholar. Founders’ Day Award Recipient.
Origins
The first “apps” that I wrote which went beyond tinkering ran on TI-82, TI-83, and TI-86 graphing calculators. TI BASIC came first, then TI assembly. At an early age, my high school, The Dwight-Englewood School, elevated technology as a cooperative discipline inseparable from mathematics and science. Problem sets were on the surface impossible until a combination of all three disciplines was brought against them. Take a scientific exploration of what looks like “random numbers” in nature. Hand-writing the calculus gave analytical clarity. But leveraging Mathematica to handle the algebraic manipulation put the focus back onto outcomes, meanings, and learning.
The lesson that stuck: technology is a tool that plants you confidently inside the actual problem or question. That ethos shows up everywhere throughout my professional life. On Syrup, a scene scripted in a space overlooking Times Square was to be lit conceptually by the dynamic and colorful signage outside the window. Julio Macat and I tried conventional approaches first with film style light fixtures. Even LED fixtures could not produce Julio’s vision.
Julio’s next idea was to project video plates captured on location in Times Square. The projectors would serve as both light source and visible set element. But even this left out the shifting tones and animated colors that those signs actually create. Instead of continuing to use traditional methods, I turned to technology. I wrote an app that played video to the projectors while simultaneously, the same code converted each frame into DMX values transmitted over sACN to ColorForce 72, 48, and Color One fixtures. I hand-tuned the color balance so the emitted light matched the projected light. It was the first time at film scale that I based lighting from imagery at scale (and this was 2011). I repeated this technique again when filming God Friended Me in using pixel mapped LED tape from Adafruit to project the movement of traffic along the FDR Drive that was printed on a photographic backing.
Life
Food
The most essential expression that a culture makes is its food. I am Italian, which means I did not arrive at this belief academically — it was installed at the table before I was old enough to argue. I travel to find it: across the US, okonomiyaki in Japan, crudo on the Italian coastlines, kopytka in brown butter and śledź cured in citrus and vinegar — both in Wrocław. I cook seriously. The table is where I learn most of what matters.
Travel
The work does not stop at 37kft. I have been on enough long flights to know exactly what matters at altitude: quiet, a working surface, and enough room to think. I also travel to find the food, which is sometimes the same trip.
At Home
My house runs on Home Assistant. I write my own integrations, build custom dashboards, and install more Thread, Zigbee, and Z-Wave devices than any reasonable person should. Platform.io and the ESP32 have made me more dangerous than is strictly wise. Throughout the house I use Inovelli dimmers — they are excellent, and I will tell anyone who asks.
Physics
Cosmology and astrophysics nearly won. I came very close to a different life — the mathematics of how light propagates through the universe instead of how it shapes a face. I still work through the physics when I want to understand something properly. It turns out to be more useful on a film set than you would expect.
Typography
When I want to understand how someone thinks about craft, I look at their bookshelf. If Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style is there — if Tufte is nearby, if I can spot Thinking with Type — I have learned something important about whether precision matters to them at the smallest scale. I have made two hiring offers after Zoom interviews based on what I could see on the shelves behind the candidate.
Typography is where craft either holds or it does not. Own the craft — the pride is apparent in every word on the page. When the typography is right, writing breathes — readable, legible, comprehensible. When it is wrong, the words die on the page. This site is set in Fieldwork, PMN Caecilia, and Commit Mono. The type scale is derived from Bringhurst’s proportional system, anchored to a 1.6rem baseline grid. Setting the rhythm was the first design decision — not a post-hoc explanation.
Music
I love music of all kinds, across genres and decades. I play none of it. Do not hand me a guitar.
New Jersey
Born here, still here, and no plans to leave. New Jersey is the most unfairly maligned state in the country, and I am available to make that case at length. Lifelong New Jerseyan — by choice.
Faith
Married since 2016. A member of Metro Community Church in New Jersey. My faith is not the first thing I mention on a professional site, but it is the foundation of everything. St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” Ask and I will share words.