Casinos have a reputation for being fun and exciting places to play. But they’re also business enterprises that must be run with care and integrity to remain profitable. As such, casinos use a variety of tricks to make sure that they’re the ones who win at the end of the day. These include keeping players on the site for longer periods of time and maximizing profits from their customer base.

For example, casino lighting design plays a big part in the overall experience of guests. It can help a casino create the atmosphere it wants, whether it’s bright and energetic with flashing lights or soothing and relaxing with plenty of natural light. Choosing the right lights is important, as it can impact everything from how much energy the space has to how well security cameras see the area.

Casino’s a bravura piece of moviemaking, but Scorsese’s sensibility is less exuberant than rueful, carefully attuned to institutional systems of grift. There’s a civic portrait scribbled in neon, a copacabana-esque sequence that deliberately echoes Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls and even a mob-run casino, where skimming the money off the top is an art (and a skill Ace countenances as long as the kickbacks go to the old-school bosses of his Kansas City syndicate). It’s a world in which the mobsters are still running things, but federal crackdowns and the risk of losing a gambling license at the slightest hint of Mafia involvement means they have to keep their distance from their cash cows.