Episode 15: Jefferson Waful

Bub & Pop | Episode 15: Jefferson Waful (recorded March 3, 2026)

Jefferson Waful is a video director at On Location. Before that he spent about twenty years lighting jam bands — eleven of them with Umphrey's McGee, and moe. before that — which means that if you've been going to shows since the nineties, you have almost certainly seen his work without knowing his name.

He got there sideways. He was editing video at ten years old, hitting record and pause on a VCR to fake a linear edit, and he wanted to be a broadcast journalist. Then he saw Phish in 1993 and that was the end of that plan. He wound up managing a band called Uncle Sammy whose members had all gone to Berklee and rehearsed in the basement of the house they all shared, so he learned to count odd time signatures by overhearing them through the floor. Nobody else was doing lights, so he did lights.

What that bought him was the ability to read a band mid-jam. He talks about watching the guitarist's foot drift toward the sustain pedal and knowing something was about to go up a gear. He talks about the drummer calling "off on one, in on two" into a talkback mic in the middle of an improv section, and killing the stage on exactly that beat, so that to anyone who did not know better the whole band just did something telepathic. And he talks about the part that took him years to learn: putting his hands behind his back and doing nothing for twenty seconds, because the song did not need him.

He is on the other side of the camera now, cutting sixty-second pieces for Super Bowls and Coachella, which he points out means he finally gets to sit down at work. The last stretch of this one is about that — a class at Emerson called The Interview that he still uses thirty-odd years later, why he never leaves his own questions in a video, and why "tell me about the sunset" gets you better tape than a question does.

An audio-first version of this podcast is available here.

Jefferson Waful | Website | Instagram | X

Also mentioned: Umphrey's McGee | moe. | Phish | On Location

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Host: Matt Hoffman | Producer: Tedd Kanakaris | Location: The Boom Room

TRANSCRIPT (lightly QC’ed)

Matt Hoffman [0:00]

Hi, I'm Matt Hoffman, and this is the Bub & Pop Podcast, where we talk about music, careers in music, life, the universe, and everything. ["The Bub & Pop Podcast Theme Song," playing on guitar and piano.] Hi, I'm Matt Hoffman, and this is the Bub & Pop Podcast. Our guest today is Jefferson Waful. If you don't know Jefferson's name, but you've been a jam band fan for the last 30 or so years, you most likely are familiar with his work. Jefferson's the lighting director, and spent years lighting both moe. and Umphrey's McGee. More recently, I've seen him run lights for gigs with bands like Muscle Tough and Reprise. And regardless of the size of the room or the rig, Jefferson does awesome work. And it was really cool to hear him talk about his perspective, not only as a lighting director, but also as a fan, and in his capacity with On Location, where he has interviews with artists and athletes and other public figures at various large events. Jefferson's an awesome guy. The city of Brotherly Love is lucky to have him, and I hope you enjoy this conversation. How did your work in video production, specifically lighting production, kind of come to be?

Jefferson Waful [1:26]

So I have been doing video editing since I was probably 10 years old. And before that, I was hitting record and pause on the VCR, trying to mimic linear editing. And all through college, I was doing editing. And then when I got out of college, it was that weird time in technological history where you couldn't edit unless you had access to a television station, or you were rich and somehow had a big, clunky, linear editing machine. And so I went about 10 years without doing any video editing. And that's kind of where I got my feet wet in the music industry. I was managing a young band called Uncle Sammy, learned how to do lights, just kind of on a whim with them because we didn't have anyone else. And then in the mid-2000s, somewhere in there, I got a laptop that I could resume editing. And I realized that I had to learn a new skill because non-linear editing was now the norm. But it came very naturally because I already had the mindset of being an editor for so long. And then after I did that for a while, then I somehow became a lighting designer. And then I didn't do a lot of editing for a while, then I came back to editing. And I realized that all my experience as a lighting designer had made me a better editor because I knew kind of the marriage of visuals and sound. And that was a really interesting feeling. For example, you know, the end of a video edit, you can cut to black or you can fade to black. And I was realizing like, oh, if the song is decaying, a fade works better. If it's a hard out, you know, a cut works better. And that was all instincts that I'd learned from being a lighting designer. So that was kind of when I realized that, oh, these two things are not random. It's definitely using like the same part of my brain.

Matt Hoffman [3:08]

Interesting, how did that move from video editing to lighting first start to happen?

Jefferson Waful [3:14]

It was more of, I mean, I guess it's related because it was all things I was doing kind of just for fun and as a hobby, but it was more of a transition from being just a multimedia jam band aficionado or music fan really. And jam bands kind of came as I was, you know, coming out of high school. I saw my first Phish show in 1993, and that changed the trajectory of my career. I wanted to be a broadcast journalist, and then I saw Phish and I had my mind blown. And then I kind of took my broadcast experience into radio when I did a jam band radio show back in the 90s before we even called them jam bands. I think I called it improvisational rock. And so, yeah, then I was managing a band and I was totally blown away by Phish's light show like everyone in those days until this day, highly influential. And we didn't have a light guy, so I just kind of started doing it for fun.

Matt Hoffman [4:12]

This was with Uncle Sammy?

Jefferson Waful [4:14]

Yes.

Matt Hoffman [4:14]

Okay, I remember Uncle Sammy.

Jefferson Waful [4:15]

Yeah, just little bar gigs where I could literally just punch out, you know, like I'm playing the drums on a desk with my two pointer fingers, blue and red, and just kind of learning. I was learning the songs at the same time they were. We all lived in a house together, so I would be upstairs and I would hear them rehearsing in the basement, and I would literally hear them rehearse every version of the song. So I was learning it at the same point as them, and they all went to Berklee College of Music. So I kind of got like a crash course in music theory, which then, working for Umphrey's all these years later, was even more so. So I was very lucky to be around so many brilliant musical minds.

Matt Hoffman [4:53]

Sure, how did that understanding of theory start to inform the lighting work?

Jefferson Waful [4:58]

Well, just so many years. First, when I was younger, my oldest friend that I've known since I was 10, Max Delaney, who was the lead guitarist in Uncle Sammy, we used to sit around listening to Phish shows, and he would point things out, and he would literally teach me how to understand what was happening and count out time signatures and kind of explain what was happening. And then with Uncle Sammy, the same thing, I would hear them all learning the songs and how to count things. And that's probably the biggest thing, is how to count odd time signatures. That was the thing that I found to be most helpful. And also, just being able to anticipate where a jam is going, and a lot of that, I would not cheat, but I would, you know, with Umphrey's, for example, Jake being the main soloist, I could always tell when things were gonna go up to the next gear, not only because you're counting, you know, in 4-4 or whatever it is, most improv is in 4-4, but I would see him be about to step on the sustain pedal. So I would know, okay, something big is gonna happen. You know, he's gonna take it up a notch. And that's the most exciting thing, is when you've been around a band long enough where you start to think like they think. And one of the things that was really exciting for me is after we had been on the road for a while, there would be certain inside jokes that would pop up. And I always felt like the improvisation was working best when everyone was kind of in on the joke. You know, the humor and improv are so closely related. So there, you know, we'd be watching Family Guy and everyone would be repeating a joke, and then the music would have nothing to do with that joke directly, but people were all kind of on the same page, and I always enjoyed being in on that a little bit.

Matt Hoffman [6:41]

Oh, absolutely. And remind me how long you ran lights for them.

Jefferson Waful [6:45]

11 years.

Matt Hoffman [6:46]

Okay, wow. Tell me about, I guess tell me about that trajectory, because they were established by the time you had joined. Oh, very, very established. I mean, they'd already played Bonnaroo and kind of blown up in the early 2000s. So what was that like for you coming in as, you know, an established lighting guy in your own way, working with an established band and kind of blending the two?

Jefferson Waful [7:10]

It was pretty mind-blowing. It was, you know, a part of my life that I'll never forget, because it just felt like, oh, the stars have aligned. You know, every metaphor you can think of, lightning in a bottle, it was that first week that I went out with them. It was, I felt, number one, I remember thinking, if I can master this, if I can do this well, I can do lights for any band in the world, because their music is so complex. And I didn't know anything going in. I remember the first gig I did with them, the lead singer, Brendan, gave me a list of, I think it was only like six or seven songs, because it was a festival slot. So that, you know, it was only a short set. And I did my best to learn those six or seven songs. And then they didn't wind up playing any of those songs, because I think his voice was shot. And so they had to kind of come up with a new setlist. But that's how kind of naive I was to their material. I knew maybe one or two of their quote, unquote, hits from my radio days as a jam band DJ. But it took me a while. And after, you know, even without knowing the material at all, it just, it was just this incredible feeling of like everything in my life leading up to this point was for a reason, all those years learning time signatures with Uncle Sammy, all those years learning the tendencies of soloists, all those looks, they call it the hairy eyeball, you know, when the guitarist looks back at the drummer and just gives that subtle nod, like, okay, the solo is coming to an end. All those little nuances, it just felt like an incredible moment for me.

Matt Hoffman [8:44]

Well, and I mean, I'd imagine as a musician on stage, remembering like your A part, with Umphrey's, you got like A parts through H parts or something like that. I mean, as the lighting guy, you have to be totally plugged into all that stuff and then some, right?

Jefferson Waful [8:58]

Like, absolutely. And I remember with moe., you know, moe. and Umphrey's are very closely related because they toured a lot. Umphrey's kind of looked up to moe., you know, because they're about five years older. And I, you know, I was closer in age to Umphrey's. And, you know, obviously they have different influences. And I would say that moe. is a little bit more, you know, grounded in rock. Obviously, they have some prog rock in there. But Umphrey's is just a little bit like... more frenetic or, you know. And so I felt like if there was a knock on me as the light guy for moe., it was probably that I was maybe a little too much at times, a little too stroby. Oh, interesting. And maybe that was just my own criticism. But then I felt like when I joined the Umphrey's team, it was like, oh, okay, this is more of a stylistic fit for where I'm at creatively. Not to take anything away from moe., I love moe. And it was just, I think maybe I was just a little bit too spastic at times.

Matt Hoffman [10:01]

Sure. When did you run lights for them?

Jefferson Waful [10:04]

That was prior to Umphrey's. Yeah, 2004 through 2008, I think.

Matt Hoffman [10:08]

Okay.

Jefferson Waful [10:09]

And by the way, that's also a criticism, I think, of any young lighting designer. There's always that tendency to kind of do too much. Because you've learned the songs, and you want to kind of accent every little hit. And, you know, every time the soloist would go to a, you know, 16th note arpeggio, I'd be hitting the strobes. And then as you get older, it's the same with musicians, by the way, you get older and you realize it's the space between the notes and it's what you don't play. And, you know, as I matured as an artist and just got older, I realized that if you have a pretty look up and the band is kind of plateauing, they're not really doing much, you just have to like, put your hands behind your back and not do anything for 20 seconds. And that's kind of, shows your, you know, maturity. So I think both of those things kind of happened as I got older, and I feel like maybe about five or six years into my tenure with Umphrey's, I kind of hit my, like the body of work that I'm most proud of.

Matt Hoffman [11:06]

Sure. And how, I mean, how do you get notes after a show or throughout the course of a run? Like, is it from the band, management, just stuff you're perceiving yourself? Like, how do you continue to kind of learn from, you know, the past gigs as you go into the next ones?

Jefferson Waful [11:22]

I mean, one of the things that I'm most grateful for is they never gave me any notes other than if I blacked out the stage and they needed to see something. Like that's purely just like from a practical standpoint. But other than that, they never really gave, I mean, they would compliment me. Sometimes we would watch videos and we used to call it game tapes. We'd be on the tour bus back in the days where we were all on one bus. And if they, and this shows their dedication to their craft. You know, a lot of bands, as soon as they're done working, it's like put Sports Center on, which there was a lot of Sports Center too. But on the nights where they felt good about the show, it'd be like game tapes. And I would be recording the shows in those days and I would take my camera out and I'd plug it in with like the RCA jacks in the back lounge. And we'd watch the entire show again. And that was really helpful for all of us because for them, it was like being able to see the show from the point of view of the audience. But it was also for me, a way to get feedback from them. In those days, it was mostly positive. And when they would debut new songs, sometimes in the in-ear monitors, they would say, hey, Waful, we need to be able to see for this one and I'd make sure not to do anything. But, you know, blacking out the stage in moderation is very impactful. If you do it just for a beat, you know, when the song ends or if there's like a rest, you know, in like a prog rock section, if there's a quick little, you know, one beat, if you can nail that with the band. For example, in their jamming sometimes, you know, they'd all be on in-ear monitors and talkback mics and drummer at the time, Kris Myers would say, off on one, in on two, while they're jamming. And it would be a rest and then one beat and then back. And if I could black out the stage at that exact moment, it would be so impactful, especially for somebody who wasn't familiar with Umphrey's because it would seem like telepathically, how are they doing that? Most people are not noticing if the drummer just says something into the mic. Most people are like paying attention to the soloist at the time. My favorite would be when he'd say off on one, in on three, because that's really off-putting. Yeah. And then you come in on a three, nobody's expecting that and people are trying to dance to that. So that's an example of when blacking out the stage really is, it works, because in an improv section, nobody really needs to be able to, I mean, they know how to play their instruments. It's more about when they're playing a new song or they need to be like reading lyrics. Yep. So yeah, to answer your question, there was never much criticism or notes in a negative sense. Sometimes it'd be like, hey, that looks really cool. So yeah, I was very lucky in that regard.

Matt Hoffman [13:53]

Had they, did they use talkback mics during the entire time you worked with them? And had moe. used them as well?

Jefferson Waful [14:01]

I don't remember. That was so long ago. Yeah. They may have, and if not, I wish I could tell you, that was.

Matt Hoffman [14:08]

No, I think about that sometimes, like, you know, Phish doesn't use them, right? And they've, Fishman and Trey have, well, all of them, have this decades-long telepathy.

Jefferson Waful [14:18]

I think Phish uses them.

Matt Hoffman [14:19]

Oh, really?

Jefferson Waful [14:20]

Yeah.

Matt Hoffman [14:20]

Oh, interesting, I didn't know that.

Jefferson Waful [14:22]

I don't know if they use them in the same way during an improv section, but they definitely use them in between songs.

Matt Hoffman [14:26]

Okay.

Jefferson Waful [14:27]

Sometimes you can even hear it. Like on the webcast, you can hear it.

Matt Hoffman [14:29]

Oh, wow.

Jefferson Waful [14:30]

Sometimes it's just a spoiler. You can hear Trey kind of turn and say, antelope.

Matt Hoffman [14:35]

Well, yeah, because I wonder, like, right, sometimes they're using them to talk to just like the sounds or the lights or sometimes each other. And, you know, right, I always wondered, like, just how are they kind of navigating that jam? But, right, for you running lights, it's helpful to know how they're thinking about things on the rhythmic side as well.

Jefferson Waful [14:53]

Sure, absolutely, and it's just a, it's a great way of utilizing technology. I think, I think Trey even now wears a lavalier mic.

Matt Hoffman [14:59]

Oh, wow.

Jefferson Waful [15:00]

If I recall.

Matt Hoffman [15:02]

Oh, well, I have to pay more attention.

Jefferson Waful [15:03]

Which is taking it to a whole other level,

Matt Hoffman [15:04]

because he doesn't even have to turn his head or walk away. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Jefferson Waful [15:07]

You know, with Umphrey's, you could always see, if you were paying attention, which obviously I was, you could see Brendan turn around and turn his back to the audience and say something to the mic, or Jake would, and that was always super helpful for me, because I was in on the conversation.

Matt Hoffman [15:20]

Yeah, yeah, I've been trying to experiment with that. I saw a show the other night where I've been trying to, like, take notes myself, because normally if I'm reviewing, I'm typing, so I set up a lav mic so I could talk to myself. And I said, I was like, how's the quality? He's like, just utterly terrible. You can't hear a fucking word you said. But, you know, so be it. Um, well, so I also feel like that it's sort of interesting, because you think about Umphrey's output, like, in a lot of ways, right? Earlier on, it was like, hey, Bridgeless, like, look at what we can do, you know? And then in some ways, the songs got more kind of simplified or streamlined over time. At least that's my, you know, view of some of the catalog. What was it like for you, I guess, like running lights, evolving with them as their sound evolved?

Jefferson Waful [16:06]

Well, again, it was really fortunate that we were all kind of the same age, because as I mentioned earlier, I feel like as you get older, your musical tastes kind of simplify a little bit. And so, yeah, I mean, there was definitely, I think the name of the album was Death by Stereo, which is when they really started to focus on, you know, four-four time signatures, just more danceable stuff. Yep. More about the grooves. And so, yeah, for me, it was those were kind of learning experiences to set a pretty look and just kind of leave it and kind of paint a canvas the same way as the song structure. So like during the verse, I would do a lot of like those slow motion moves where I'd go from one position to another, but it was so slow and kind of subtle. And that's where my video background kind of comes in. You know, like, oh, this is a four-four time signature in 120 beats per minute. So I'm gonna do, you know, slow motion because that's what the song calls for, in my opinion. And then when the chorus comes, you change to something, but then, you know, you go back to the same look for the verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and then the bridge, something new, and then maybe the jam, something new, but all very subtle and more just like painting a picture. Whereas, you know, not the run and gun of a song like Bridgeless or Wizard Burial Ground, which are all super fun, but just different. And I think with maturity, a lot of bands, a lot of musicians, Phish, same thing, you know, a lot of their new materials, just four-four, kind of just pure rock and roll. Yeah, yeah, it's like, I don't know if it's that they've already sort of proven themselves or like part of what made them compelling initially. It's like, there's more to it than just the kind of craziness or like jazz shred of, you know, Phish in the 90s versus what they're doing now. It's just, yeah, in a lot of ways, I think, like that professional maturity, like you said.

Matt Hoffman [18:02]

So are you like, are you constantly running lights in your head when you go to see a show? Like, what is that like for you?

Jefferson Waful [18:08]

Not really, I'll notice things that I would do differently. And I try not to verbalize that unless I'm with like a very close friend, because everyone interprets art differently, it's so subjective. So I would say for the most part, no. If I go to see another jam band that's similar to what I used to do, yeah, I'll make some mental notes just because I was so immersed in that world for almost 20 years, I mean, definitely 20 years if you count Uncle Sammy, moe., and Umphrey's. I mean, like thousands of shows. So it's hard for that, it's in my DNA now, it's hard to not see it just the way I see it. So yeah, I'll say like, that's such an obvious red moment. I can't believe they went to green there, but I would never say that out loud. You know what I mean? Because that's like, like I said, it's subjective, it's art.

Matt Hoffman [19:01]

Well, yeah, and right, like agreed that it's subjective, but somebody might be like, what, you would go green there? Like, or you would go red there? You know, yeah, people, yeah, it's easy to interpret like differences of opinion as like a criticism somehow, where it's not necessarily, it's just, you know, a different way somebody else might do it.

Jefferson Waful [19:19]

But what does happen sometimes is I'll be with, again, I wouldn't say it around the general public, but if I'm with a close friend or if my dad and I watch a lot of Phish webcasts, so that would be an example where I would say something in the privacy of our own home, I'd be like, wow, you know, I was really feeling like a purple moment, and then like a second later, it'll go to purple, and he'll kind of laugh. But like, it's so obvious if that's what you do for 20 years.

Matt Hoffman [19:41]

Yeah, yeah. It's in your blood. I'm assuming you got your dad into Phish, not the other way around.

Jefferson Waful [19:47]

Oh, yeah, and he got me into Neil Young. So I mean, we went to Farm Aid in, I think, 1998.

Matt Hoffman [19:53]

Yeah, I remember that year.

Jefferson Waful [19:54]

And, you know, to see both of our favorite bands, and then to see Neil Young come out and sit in with Phish on Down by the River of all songs, because that was the song that like my dad taught me when I was seven years old or whatever, because it was like his favorite song that got him into Neil Young, got him into CSNY. So that was such a serendipitous moment to, we didn't think Neil would sit in, because he was like, you know, in a different world, he was a legend. And then to see him come out, it was like, OK, maybe he's going to play Runaway Jim with them. We'll see what this goes. And out of all the songs in his catalog for it to be Down by the River, it was just, it was mind blowing. So yeah, we have a, my dad and I have a really special connection musically. And whenever I'm home, a lot of times, they live on Cape Cod, so a lot of times it's in the summer. And he'll watch, he's probably seen, you know, 15 live Phish shows and, you know, 50 plus webcasts. And even if they're on the West Coast, which a lot of times they are, we watched a lot of, like, gorge runs.

Matt Hoffman [20:52]

Oh, nice.

Jefferson Waful [20:53]

And he'll stay up till 3 in the morning and wait till the end of the encore, he loves it.

Matt Hoffman [20:56]

How many shows have you been to at this point?

Jefferson Waful [20:59]

For Phish shows? I lost track, but given the number of years and the average, it's got to be between 300 and 400, somewhere in there.

Matt Hoffman [21:09]

What's it like going to a show now? I mean, just with so many under your belt. Like, I've, my first show was in 97, but I'm still, I don't know, like 30, 40 times or so. I haven't really kept track of it.

Jefferson Waful [21:22]

Honestly, it's, I feel my age, you know, I'm 50 now. And so it's an endurance challenge to just be in a crowd. Because when you work for a band, you have the luxury of being at front of house and having a gate around you and having a security guard and just being in the best spot for the best sound and the best lights. So it's a challenge to, you know, go in the front door and be in a huge crowd and then be on, for me anyway, just to be on my feet for four hours. I have to remind myself to sit or else like my low, and I sound like such an old man, but I'm giving you the honest answer.

Matt Hoffman [21:57]

You have five years on me and I feel the same thing.

Jefferson Waful [21:58]

Yeah, just my low back, just from standing is, so I try to, this past New Year's run, I forced myself to sit. And it's hard because your instinct is like, don't be the guy sitting, you know? So I'd have to try to make a judgment called like, Prince Caspian, I could sit and guitar solo, maybe I'll stand, I don't know. But my body, you know, it's just, I have to start doing yoga.

Matt Hoffman [22:20]

Oh dude, yeah, I totally hear you. Do you have like an ideal spot you like to see him from? You know, up close, far back?

Jefferson Waful [22:29]

Well, if it was up to me, it would be dead center.

Matt Hoffman [22:32]

Soundboard, yeah.

Jefferson Waful [22:33]

But I don't love GA, I like having a seat. So if it's a place like Madison Square Garden, I'll prefer a seat. But if it's a place like, you know, like an amphitheater, then yeah, dead center, halfway back to the soundboard.

Matt Hoffman [22:45]

Yep, nice. Well, and so tell me about the work that you're doing now with On Location kind of post, you know, still in the music media space, but out from behind the light board.

Jefferson Waful [22:59]

Well, now I get to sit for my job. And by the way, I could, a lot of lighting designers sit, but I never could just because of the way I needed to kind of be like dancing in my own way. If you looked at me, I didn't look like I was dancing, but I was tapping my feet and I just, I had to kind of feel connected to the music. So I could never do that sitting. Plus I needed to have a line of sight over the crowd to see the band members, to see all those subtle nods. But now I'm a video director, producer, editor for a company called On Location. And we do VIP hospitality for all the major sporting events and some music, we still do, you know, Coachella and Stagecoach and some other music related events. But for the most part, it's, you know, the Super Bowl and the NCAA and WWE and UFC, all of the, you know, Daytona 500, a lot of the, you know, major sporting events. And I cut our videos, promotional videos to promote the upcoming events.

Matt Hoffman [23:55]

Are you a sports guy as well?

Jefferson Waful [23:58]

Not as much now as I, when I was a kid, I was a huge, I mean, I'm still a baseball fan, but when I was a kid, I was a huge basketball and baseball fan, a little bit football. Now I get to go to the Super Bowl, which is funny because I never been to an NFL game up until three years ago.

Matt Hoffman [24:12]

Oh, wow.

Jefferson Waful [24:13]

My first game was a Super Bowl and now I've been to three. And it's such an exhilarating experience.

Matt Hoffman [24:19]

I believe it.

Jefferson Waful [24:20]

Like I thought I had all my life peaks through Phish shows and seeing the Grateful Dead and live music has always been the thing that's kind of given me a peak life experience, but being at the Super Bowl was really special and really breathtaking.

Matt Hoffman [24:33]

Yeah, yeah, I believe it.

Jefferson Waful [24:34]

I feel really grateful to be able to experience that.

Matt Hoffman [24:36]

Yeah, plus, right, seeing the halftime acts, too. I mean, talk about a production, like that's, yeah, that's wild.

Jefferson Waful [24:43]

This year, you know, we don't get a seat because, you know, we're working and we're there to serve our guests and I do the interviews when I'm at the Super Bowl, I interview our guests down on the field because they're paying for these travel packages and the highest tier gets to go celebrate on the field after the game. And so during the game, I'm just kind of like finding a couch somewhere in the back and staying out of the way. But for me, the highlight of this year's Super Bowl, and this is gonna sound funny, but as a music guy, seeing Charlie Puth sing the national anthem was the emotional highlight for me. I thought it was just an amazing rendition and to see the pyro and the military flyover afterwards, it just took my breath away.

Matt Hoffman [25:26]

Wow, yeah, I believe it. Well, and I guess in some ways, is this kind of harkening back to your early journalism type work, like, again, being, you know, front of the camera, leading these conversations?

Jefferson Waful [25:37]

It really is, yeah. I mean, I went to Emerson and I took a class called The Interview and all we did was learn about how to do a good interview. And I still use those skills today. And I feel really fortunate, like all these years later, it's like 35 years or whatever, maybe 32 years since I was in that class, and I'm still using those same skills when I'm interviewing people on the field. And a lot of these people have had a couple of drinks over the course of the game and you're just trying to get a good soundbite out of them. And a lot of times, you know, I don't have to tell you, you're doing The Interview here, but like, a lot of times the best questions are statements, you know? Tell me the emotions going through your mind right now, you know, tell me, paint us a picture.

Matt Hoffman [26:14]

Yeah, I was gonna ask out of curiosity, what does doing a good interview come down to? I'm still figuring it out, but...

Jefferson Waful [26:20]

To me, just trying to get the person to tell a good story with a lot of emotion. And, you know, the type of videos that I produce don't ever include my questions. So, if they don't say something the way I want them to, I'll ask them to say it again, and sometimes that's in the form of a statement.

Matt Hoffman [26:39]

Sure.

Jefferson Waful [26:40]

Tell me about your experience, tell me this, tell me the itinerary, you know, since you got in town till now, tell us what you did. Because in my mind, I know the video content that we captured, and I wanna marry that audio with the video. So, if, you know, The Halftime Show, for example, I knew we had great video of the sun going down, and I wanted to make sure that we could include that, so I need to have audio to go with that. So, you know, tell me about that Halftime Show. Yeah, yeah. Tell me about the sunset, you know.

Matt Hoffman [27:08]

Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah, it's funny, there's... Yeah, it's easy to... It's just, you know, walking a lot of different lines at the same time. I know you're saying, I'm curious though, you mentioned that you don't like to put your questions in. Is that just a sort of artistic stylistic choice, or is that a company policy, or just a preference on your part?

Jefferson Waful [27:31]

It's not a policy. Yeah, it's a preference. It's just the style of videos that we're producing. Yeah. You know, like a short-form sizzle reel. You only... For me, the biggest skill I learned from journalism is to... Whittle it down to the fewest amount of words possible. Yep. And when you're including 17 different quotes, and you're trying to fit it into 60 seconds or 90 seconds, you want to take out every um, every ah, but you also want to take out every piece of every sentence that doesn't need to be there. And sometimes that makes it grammatically a fragment. And it doesn't always have to be a full sentence. If you're watching video of the thing they're talking about, sometimes I'm just saying, the sunset. Yeah. That's enough. Yep. You're looking at the picture of the sunset, and you're hearing them say, the sunset, and then you cut to the next person. And when you combine all the sound bites together, maybe it forms a full sentence. And you're also looking at the subtitles on the screen. So yeah, for me, it's all about saying more with less.

Matt Hoffman [28:31]

And Tedd and I just had this experience as we were putting together the final cut of our premiere episode. The intro that I gave was like two minutes long. I think we cut it down to like under 30 seconds. Because like, yeah, it doesn't need to be. And you know, I'm happy to talk, but like I'm having people on to let them talk. So, you know, let them talk.

Jefferson Waful [28:51]

And I also don't want ever to have anyone repeat the same thing within the same piece. So, you know, for example, I went and interviewed people in the forest at Electric Forest this past year, which was an amazing experience. And what I just said was something that almost everyone said, oh, it's amazing, it's amazing. I'm not going to include any, I didn't even think I used the word amazing. Maybe once. Yep. But it's all about the variety, and it's all about, well, somebody's already said it's amazing. Like, we get it. Yeah. We need something else. Yep. So somebody else said, it's like being a kid on Christmas morning. And, oh, okay, that's a better way of saying it. Yeah. I'll include that. So that's just an example of, you know, only including the bare minimum. So like, my question doesn't need to be in there. And nobody wants to hear from me anyway. It's all about putting the focus on the guests.

Matt Hoffman [29:36]

Well, yeah, and I think in a good, like a documentary, for example, it's weird when you hear the interviewer ask a question in a lot of cases. Sometimes they're off camera because they're, you know, not intended to be a part of the show like that, which, yeah, just kind of makes sense, I think, when done well and when cut cleanly, it flows great.

Jefferson Waful [29:59]

Yeah, I think like, I did an hour-long documentary on Umphreys when I was working for them. And I think there was one time, and I don't remember what it was, there was one time where you can hear my voice off camera because it was a follow-up and it was in context and it was necessary. Sure. So I think that is okay, but in a 60-second piece, there's no space for it.

Matt Hoffman [30:20]

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Have you put together any other, like, documentaries or films since that one?

Jefferson Waful [30:26]

I haven't. That was a really lucky experience because we were on the road and I had access to the band and we had plenty of time during the day to shoot it. With my life now, I just don't have the time to do that amount of work in addition to my day job. And my day job is all video all the time, but it's just a series of smaller videos. I think the longest video I've made in recent memory is maybe two and a half minutes. But most of the videos I make are 30 seconds.

Matt Hoffman [30:58]

Yeah, it's funny, there's some quote attributed to like Winston Churchill or something that it's like, oh, if you want me to come give a speech, if you want a five-minute speech, I need a month to prepare. If you want a 20-minute speech, I need a week to prepare. And if you want an hour, I can just show up now and, you know, start talking. And I feel the same way with, you know, written stuff and the kind of episodes we're putting together

Jefferson Waful [31:20]

Yeah, and it's funny, I can't really turn that part of my brain off of like saying the most with the fewest amount of words. I see advertisements now that have already been approved by professional copywriters. And I rewrite it in my head with like less words. You know, it'd be like seven words and I'll be like, you could have said that in four.

Matt Hoffman [31:39]

I'm going a slightly different direction. And so I've been like, I've been looking at certain just tried and true conventions and asking why more recently. So like the passive voice, everybody knows you don't use it, but why? And, you know, my understanding is part of it has to do with just eliminating any confusion. So it's like, well, if you can use it in a way that doesn't generate confusion, like, hey, let me try that. And nobody else gives a shit about this grammar stuff, you know, besides me, but it's, yeah, it's fun to kind of think about and mess around with sometimes.

Matt Hoffman [32:12]

It was great talking. I appreciate you making the time and, you know, working with me scheduling-wise to make it happen.

Jefferson Waful [32:18]

My pleasure, yeah.