JOHN VELEZ
THE MAN WHO LIGHTS THE MOVIES
He has lit Black Swan and The Whale and Maestro and Garden State. He has worked with Aronofsky and Spike Lee and Bradley Cooper and Oliver Stone. He lives in Atlantic Highlands. And he would like you to call him Gaffer.
Written by Adam Nelson, Socko! Co-Founder
THE MAN WHO LIGHTS THE MOVIES
He has lit Black Swan and The Whale and Maestro and Garden State. He has worked with Aronofsky and Spike Lee and Bradley Cooper and Oliver Stone. He lives in Atlantic Highlands. And he would like you to call him Gaffer.
Written by Adam Nelson, Socko! Co-Founder
When the lights come up on a movie screen, nobody in the audience thinks about the person who put the lights up on the set. Nobody thinks about the 14-hour day, the night exterior in the rain, the 30 electrics running cable across a street, the rigging crew that worked through the night so the director could walk onto a finished set and say, Yes, that is what I want. Nobody thinks about any of it. That is the job. You build the frame and then you disappear inside it.
But here is the thing about light that nobody in the audience will ever understand unless somebody tells them. Light is not decoration. Light is not mood. Light is the movie. Without light there is no image, and without an image there is no film, and the person who controls that light, the person who decides where it falls and where it does not, how hard it hits and how soft it fades, whether it comes through a window or bounces off a ceiling or rakes across a face at an angle that makes you believe a man is guilty before he opens his mouth,that person is the gaffer. The gaffer is the last craft standing between the camera and the dark. Every frame of every movie you have ever loved was lit by a human being who showed up before the actors and left after them, who carried the weight of the image on a union card and a pair of hands that knew what a 12K does to a room.
New Jersey is a union state. It has always been a union state. The blue blood runs under the blue collar here, and it has since before anybody in Hollywood knew what a permit was. The ironworkers who built the bridges, the longshoremen who worked the ports, the electricians who wired the buildings, these are the same bloodlines that are now wiring the soundstages and rigging the lights and running the cable for the biggest production boom this coast has ever seen. The working men and women of this state are not a footnote to the film industry. They are the film industry. They are the ones who make the image possible, and they are the ones whose names you will never see on a poster.
John Velez is one of them. He has been a gaffer since 1993, which means he has been the person responsible for every watt of light that has hit every actor on every set he has worked on for more than 30 years. He has done this for Darren Aronofsky on Black Swan, The Whale, Noah, and Caught Stealing. For Spike Lee on Inside Man, Bamboozled, and Highest to Lowest. For Bradley Cooper on Maestro. For Oliver Stone on World Trade Center. For Jodie Foster on Money Monster. For Martin Scorsese on The Irishman. And for a kid from Jersey named Zach Braff on a small indie called Garden State, the movie that put our name on the marquee.
He lives in Atlantic Highlands. He is a union member. He has been a union member for more than three decades. And in a state that has always been a union town, in an industry that is arriving on Jersey soil at a pace nobody predicted, his voice is the voice that matters most and gets heard the least.
SOCKO! sat down with one of the unsung.
But here is the thing about light that nobody in the audience will ever understand unless somebody tells them. Light is not decoration. Light is not mood. Light is the movie. Without light there is no image, and without an image there is no film, and the person who controls that light, the person who decides where it falls and where it does not, how hard it hits and how soft it fades, whether it comes through a window or bounces off a ceiling or rakes across a face at an angle that makes you believe a man is guilty before he opens his mouth,that person is the gaffer. The gaffer is the last craft standing between the camera and the dark. Every frame of every movie you have ever loved was lit by a human being who showed up before the actors and left after them, who carried the weight of the image on a union card and a pair of hands that knew what a 12K does to a room.
New Jersey is a union state. It has always been a union state. The blue blood runs under the blue collar here, and it has since before anybody in Hollywood knew what a permit was. The ironworkers who built the bridges, the longshoremen who worked the ports, the electricians who wired the buildings, these are the same bloodlines that are now wiring the soundstages and rigging the lights and running the cable for the biggest production boom this coast has ever seen. The working men and women of this state are not a footnote to the film industry. They are the film industry. They are the ones who make the image possible, and they are the ones whose names you will never see on a poster.
John Velez is one of them. He has been a gaffer since 1993, which means he has been the person responsible for every watt of light that has hit every actor on every set he has worked on for more than 30 years. He has done this for Darren Aronofsky on Black Swan, The Whale, Noah, and Caught Stealing. For Spike Lee on Inside Man, Bamboozled, and Highest to Lowest. For Bradley Cooper on Maestro. For Oliver Stone on World Trade Center. For Jodie Foster on Money Monster. For Martin Scorsese on The Irishman. And for a kid from Jersey named Zach Braff on a small indie called Garden State, the movie that put our name on the marquee.
He lives in Atlantic Highlands. He is a union member. He has been a union member for more than three decades. And in a state that has always been a union town, in an industry that is arriving on Jersey soil at a pace nobody predicted, his voice is the voice that matters most and gets heard the least.
SOCKO! sat down with one of the unsung.
From the Netflix show Good Sex. Photo by John Velez
ADAM NELSON: Someone moves to New Jersey from L.A. next week to work in the industry. Forget the job. What do they need to know about the state before they know anything about the set?
John Velez: Jersey is a no-nonsense place. If you walk onto a set and start bragging about what you did in other markets, you are going to set off every BS meter in the room. And do not, under any circumstances, say the words “We do it like this in L.A.” The industry here is small. People talk. My advice is, find somebody who is already established in the Jersey crew world and let them help you break the ice. Show up, do the work, keep your mouth shut until you’ve earned the right to open it.
Nelson: A 22-year-old emails you tomorrow and says, “I want to be a gaffer.” Do you tell them the truth or do you let them find out?
Velez: Most of my team are in their early twenties, so I know this conversation well. My advice is always the same: Start with the basics. Work at an equipment rental house. Even if you go to film school first, the next stop should be a rental house. You need to learn the tools. You need to learn the structure of a set, the chain of command, who reports to whom, how the electric department connects to the grip department connects to the camera department. And the rental house gives you something film school cannot, which is proximity. You are working alongside established crew every day. You are building a network without trying. I have hired people straight off the rental house floor when things get busy and I need extra hands for a large night exterior. I have had 30-plus electrics on some of my bigger setups. Those bodies have to come from somewhere, and the rental house is where I find them.
Nelson: You are a chief lighting technician. That title has the word chief in it. What does being in charge actually mean at four in the morning when something has gone wrong?
Velez: Funny thing about the title chief lighting technician. It came out of L.A. years ago. I prefer “Gaffer.” I was told once that a gaffer is the one with the most experience, and I can say that confidently now. But being in charge does not mean doing everything yourself. It means surrounding yourself with experience. My rigging gaffer was once my best boy. He proved over years that he could execute my lighting plot and make sure nothing gets missed. My best boy is somebody who has been around me long enough to handle the off-set problems so I can stay focused on the work. You build protection around yourself. You learn from every mishap, and you make sure it only happens once.
Nelson: What is a piece of advice somebody gave you early on that you are still using this week?
Velez: Always listen, and you will learn. I still share that with my team. The other one is about time. There is a joke on set: If you are on time, you are late. I always arrive half an hour before call. I want to see what my rigging crew has done overnight. I want to get comfortable with what was set up before we start rolling. Because once we are in, things move very fast.
Nelson: You have worked with every kind of director. The ones who know exactly what they want, the ones who pretend to, and the ones who are figuring it out in front of God and the crew. What does a gaffer actually do in that third situation that nobody gives him credit for?
Velez: I bring a positive attitude to work. My job is to support the cinematographer. During prep, I learn what his vision is for the project and I work to help him achieve it. Reference images and camera tests are tools I push for hard during prep, because once you are on the floor it is too late to be figuring out what the look is. At the end of the day, it is a collaboration, and what makes the journey enjoyable is when everyone brings something to the party. A cinematographer named Michael VanHowten told me that early on: Everyone needs to bring something to the party. I still believe it. I share it with my team. I run lighting exercises with them every day. I can say with confidence that my team will be the next generation of cinematographers.
John Velez: Jersey is a no-nonsense place. If you walk onto a set and start bragging about what you did in other markets, you are going to set off every BS meter in the room. And do not, under any circumstances, say the words “We do it like this in L.A.” The industry here is small. People talk. My advice is, find somebody who is already established in the Jersey crew world and let them help you break the ice. Show up, do the work, keep your mouth shut until you’ve earned the right to open it.
Nelson: A 22-year-old emails you tomorrow and says, “I want to be a gaffer.” Do you tell them the truth or do you let them find out?
Velez: Most of my team are in their early twenties, so I know this conversation well. My advice is always the same: Start with the basics. Work at an equipment rental house. Even if you go to film school first, the next stop should be a rental house. You need to learn the tools. You need to learn the structure of a set, the chain of command, who reports to whom, how the electric department connects to the grip department connects to the camera department. And the rental house gives you something film school cannot, which is proximity. You are working alongside established crew every day. You are building a network without trying. I have hired people straight off the rental house floor when things get busy and I need extra hands for a large night exterior. I have had 30-plus electrics on some of my bigger setups. Those bodies have to come from somewhere, and the rental house is where I find them.
Nelson: You are a chief lighting technician. That title has the word chief in it. What does being in charge actually mean at four in the morning when something has gone wrong?
Velez: Funny thing about the title chief lighting technician. It came out of L.A. years ago. I prefer “Gaffer.” I was told once that a gaffer is the one with the most experience, and I can say that confidently now. But being in charge does not mean doing everything yourself. It means surrounding yourself with experience. My rigging gaffer was once my best boy. He proved over years that he could execute my lighting plot and make sure nothing gets missed. My best boy is somebody who has been around me long enough to handle the off-set problems so I can stay focused on the work. You build protection around yourself. You learn from every mishap, and you make sure it only happens once.
Nelson: What is a piece of advice somebody gave you early on that you are still using this week?
Velez: Always listen, and you will learn. I still share that with my team. The other one is about time. There is a joke on set: If you are on time, you are late. I always arrive half an hour before call. I want to see what my rigging crew has done overnight. I want to get comfortable with what was set up before we start rolling. Because once we are in, things move very fast.
Nelson: You have worked with every kind of director. The ones who know exactly what they want, the ones who pretend to, and the ones who are figuring it out in front of God and the crew. What does a gaffer actually do in that third situation that nobody gives him credit for?
Velez: I bring a positive attitude to work. My job is to support the cinematographer. During prep, I learn what his vision is for the project and I work to help him achieve it. Reference images and camera tests are tools I push for hard during prep, because once you are on the floor it is too late to be figuring out what the look is. At the end of the day, it is a collaboration, and what makes the journey enjoyable is when everyone brings something to the party. A cinematographer named Michael VanHowten told me that early on: Everyone needs to bring something to the party. I still believe it. I share it with my team. I run lighting exercises with them every day. I can say with confidence that my team will be the next generation of cinematographers.
From the Netflix show Bad Day. Photo by John Velez
Nelson: New Jersey has a reputation. Some of it is fair, some of it is folklore. As a working gaffer, what does the rest of the country still get wrong about how we do business here?
Velez: Jersey has a lot to offer. I have always found that working here is easier in one specific way: The public is still fascinated by the process. People stop and watch. They ask questions. They bring coffee to the crew. That said, when you are shutting down streets and running cable across somebody’s front lawn, it is going to become an inconvenience to some people. Eventually every production in this state is going to need a serious public relations system to manage that relationship. But right now, the goodwill is real. People are excited. That counts for more than you think.
Nelson: The industry is arriving. Studios, stages, streamers, all of it. In 10 years, what is the Jersey film world going to be proud of, and what is it going to have to apologize for?
Velez: That is the tricky question. I think we need the right people training the next generation of set technicians. It is critical that the incentive program actually creates jobs for the people who live here. Right now, I see a lot of crew coming in from New York and L.A., and I think that is a problem. If the boom is real, then the jobs need to go to Jersey residents, and I am not sure there is a system in place to make sure that happens. That is what we might have to apologize for if we do not get ahead of it.
Nelson: What is the single most questionable thing you have ever seen somebody do on a set?
Velez: Safety education should be a priority on every production, full stop. Every time I start a new show, I have onboarding material that stresses the importance of working safely. I once watched a set dresser working over a staircase on top of a chair. I stopped him and he gave me an attitude. But I have been around long enough to know that saying something is part of my job, whether or not people want to hear it. What troubled me more was watching the other crew walk right past and not say a word. The film industry behaves like a traveling circus. It moves fast and carefree until an accident happens. And then everybody wishes somebody had said something.
Nelson: A set electric calls you at 11 at night, no context, just: I think I screwed up today. What do you say first?
Velez: I get calls at all hours. Family emergencies, car trouble, illness. Life happens and it is going to be OK, that is always the first thing I say. Honestly, I do not think I would get a call that says I screwed up, because I make sure everything on set is working correctly before we wrap. But if that call came, I would say: Do not stress about it. It will work out. Because it always does, if you have the right people around you.
Nelson: A kid is standing in the crew lot at 5:30 in the morning on their first day. What should they be more scared of, the work or themselves?
Velez: Neither. I make sure any new face meets my team and the other department heads. Working on a film set is like joining an extended family. I have known some of my colleagues for over 30 years. We always make introductions. When you are putting in a 12-hour day together, you learn to keep everyone engaged in the process. But I will be honest with you: It takes a certain kind of person. The hours are long. You never know when the day is going to end. Ten hours, 12 hours, 14 hours. Night shoots in the rain, in the cold, in the heat. It is very demanding on the body. A friend once said to me that it is like working on an oil rig. He was not wrong.
Velez: Jersey has a lot to offer. I have always found that working here is easier in one specific way: The public is still fascinated by the process. People stop and watch. They ask questions. They bring coffee to the crew. That said, when you are shutting down streets and running cable across somebody’s front lawn, it is going to become an inconvenience to some people. Eventually every production in this state is going to need a serious public relations system to manage that relationship. But right now, the goodwill is real. People are excited. That counts for more than you think.
Nelson: The industry is arriving. Studios, stages, streamers, all of it. In 10 years, what is the Jersey film world going to be proud of, and what is it going to have to apologize for?
Velez: That is the tricky question. I think we need the right people training the next generation of set technicians. It is critical that the incentive program actually creates jobs for the people who live here. Right now, I see a lot of crew coming in from New York and L.A., and I think that is a problem. If the boom is real, then the jobs need to go to Jersey residents, and I am not sure there is a system in place to make sure that happens. That is what we might have to apologize for if we do not get ahead of it.
Nelson: What is the single most questionable thing you have ever seen somebody do on a set?
Velez: Safety education should be a priority on every production, full stop. Every time I start a new show, I have onboarding material that stresses the importance of working safely. I once watched a set dresser working over a staircase on top of a chair. I stopped him and he gave me an attitude. But I have been around long enough to know that saying something is part of my job, whether or not people want to hear it. What troubled me more was watching the other crew walk right past and not say a word. The film industry behaves like a traveling circus. It moves fast and carefree until an accident happens. And then everybody wishes somebody had said something.
Nelson: A set electric calls you at 11 at night, no context, just: I think I screwed up today. What do you say first?
Velez: I get calls at all hours. Family emergencies, car trouble, illness. Life happens and it is going to be OK, that is always the first thing I say. Honestly, I do not think I would get a call that says I screwed up, because I make sure everything on set is working correctly before we wrap. But if that call came, I would say: Do not stress about it. It will work out. Because it always does, if you have the right people around you.
Nelson: A kid is standing in the crew lot at 5:30 in the morning on their first day. What should they be more scared of, the work or themselves?
Velez: Neither. I make sure any new face meets my team and the other department heads. Working on a film set is like joining an extended family. I have known some of my colleagues for over 30 years. We always make introductions. When you are putting in a 12-hour day together, you learn to keep everyone engaged in the process. But I will be honest with you: It takes a certain kind of person. The hours are long. You never know when the day is going to end. Ten hours, 12 hours, 14 hours. Night shoots in the rain, in the cold, in the heat. It is very demanding on the body. A friend once said to me that it is like working on an oil rig. He was not wrong.
John Velez is a gaffer based in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. His credits include Black Swan, The Whale, Maestro, Caught Stealing, The Irishman, Inside Man, World Trade Center, Garden State, She Said, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, among many others. He is currently working on an Amazon production.
❖ ❖ ❖
This story appeared in the inaugural issue of Socko! Magazine [May, 2026]. Click here to subscribe
Adam Nelson has lived at the intersection of performance and American storytelling for more than three decades. As the founder of Workhouse, the New York public relations agency he has run since 1999, he has built an award-winning firm representing filmmakers, artists, festivals, and cultural institutions. A professor at the New Jersey Film Academy, he is currently training a new generation for the state's rapidly expanding production economy. His film Food for Thought, directed by Gary Hanna, was a finalist at the AP'N3 Film Challenge and went on to win Best Silent Film at the 2026 Absurd Film Festival in Milan. Huckleberry Jim, his debut novel, is querying literary agents now. Nelson is co-founder of SOCKO! Magazine
