Pimp My PENNY – Between Construction Chaos and Glamour
A discount store full of gold and glamour. Another one that looks like a nightclub. For the six-part YouTube series “Pimp My PENNY”, two discount stores were completely turned upside down. We documented the entire transformation. From the first empty shelf to the finishing touches. Twelve shoot days, two construction sites, and a production where standing still was never an option.
super market meets extravagance.
Frankfurt vs. Hamburg. Glamour vs. club culture. Leyla Heiter vs. David Puentez. The idea behind “Pimp My PENNY”: Two creators each get their own PENNY store and the freedom to redesign it however they want. Leyla went all in on gold, glitter, chandeliers, and a life-sized statue of herself. David Puentez, aka DJ Pünti, turned his store into a party venue with disco balls, LED installations, and serious club vibes. Two completely different visions. One battle. And our cameras right in the middle of it all.
no script survives a construction site.
On a construction site, a shooting schedule is more of a friendly suggestion. Ideally, we wanted to film when everything was happening at once: lots of people on site, different crews at work, visible transformations, and plenty of action. Reality, however, often had other plans. Schedules shift. Floors get installed later than expected. Walls come down earlier than planned. And just when you’re about to start an interview, someone decides it’s the perfect time to fire up an angle grinder.
For us, that meant no rigidly scheduled production, but documentary-style filmmaking right in the middle of an ongoing renovation. Always close to the creators, their decisions, and the moments that couldn’t be recreated. To make that work, we had to know what was happening on both construction sites before it happened. And still be ready to change the plan at any moment. Because the best scenes rarely made it onto the shooting schedule.
12 days. 2 cities. 6 episodes.
Between May and September, our team travelled back and forth between Frankfurt and Hamburg. Six shoot days in each city. Two completely different construction sites. And a whole lot of footage that eventually had to come together as one coherent story.
We filmed with our in-house crew and our own equipment. Short communication lines, quick decisions, and full control over our setup. Not necessarily over what was happening in front of the camera. As the stores transformed piece by piece, we captured the footage for six episodes. Sometimes right in the middle of construction chaos, sometimes between different crews working on site, and sometimes in that brief moment when everything suddenly fell into place.
The result: six episodes of around 15 minutes each, plus a trailer. Two stores that barely resemble what they looked like before.
anything but a typical commercial shoot.
“Pimp My PENNY” was anything but a traditional commercial production. No controlled set, no perfectly staged sequences, no second chances to capture that one crucial moment. Instead: real people, real construction sites, and two creators whose ideas gradually became reality. That’s exactly what shaped a YouTube series somewhere between makeover, reality TV, and competition. Big transformations, little meltdowns, and everything in between.
The first episodes of “Pimp My PENNY” are already available on YouTube. A new episode drops every Tuesday at 5 PM.
