ALEX BUONO, the director of Photography for saturday night live, began his journey in cinematography in 1991 when he enrolled into the USC School of Cinematic Arts, majoring in film production and still photography.

“I’ve wanted to be a filmmaker since I was small. Growing up in the US, I was inspired by blockbusters like Star Wars and ET,” he says.

Upon graduation, he worked on the set of the movie Twister. He drove all the way to Oklahoma from Los Angeles to be a camera intern, for free.

“I cleaned equipment and carried cases all around the movie set in the corn field for five months, but I learned a lot about movie making from the experts,” he says.

Due to his passion and patience, he was offered a camera assistant job for a number of box office movies, like Con Air, Armageddon and Conspiracy Theory.

In the meantime, Buono spent his spare time and weekends doing independent films, short film for friends and film school, low budget commercials, music videos and finally, he made his way into independent features.

He was in it for about three years before becoming a full time cinematographer.

DISCOVERING DSLR

Buono is used to shooting with big cinema cameras under studio lights. Then one day, the producer asked him to shoot the sequence title for the show. This required him to do something different.

“Normally for a show sequence title, we would just shoot in one location, in a bar or the studio, for instance, and we’d finish everything in one or two days. However, this time around, I was tasked to shoot the 2010’s SNL title sequence involving 13 cast members all around New York and at night. It was mind-boggling,” says Buono.

Nevertheless, a few days earlier, he had a chat with long time portraiture photographer Mary Ellen Matthews, who was responsible for all the amazing SNL portraits. The latter had shot some videos with Canon 5D MkII dSLR camera.

“I was amazed to see how great the videos were. The more amazing thing was that the images came from a still camera. Until then, I hadn’t realised that such a camera could do a good video job.”
Buono realised that he had to make a decision fast.

“For the assignment, I would be running all over New York at night to shoot. I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring along the traditional camera packages and lighting facilities for the shoot.”

It was then that he thought of using a dSLR camera for the entire title sequence shoot.

Buono says that the beauty of using a dSLR to shoot movies is in the built-in big image sensor, which allows for higher ISO sensitivity of up to 6400.

“This would enable me to shoot at night with just using available street lights,” he says.

“It might sound crazy at that time. Even I thought the idea was crazy. But it turned out well, very well indeed,” he adds.

NEW POSSIBILITIES WITH TECH

Since discovering the capability of dSLR cameras for shooting high quality movies, Buono has never looked back.

“The small dSLR cameras are the way to go. They are light, easy to maintain and most importantly, very affordable,” he says.

Being small, dSLR cameras are very handy especially for shooting in tight spaces like in a small room, which is not practical with a huge cinema camera.

“The full frame camera gave high quality and cine-like depth of field, where the foreground can be sharp and background can be blurred. This cannot be done with a digital video camera,” he says.

Today Buono uses cameras like the 5D, 7D and the new C300 from Canon for his work.

Other related technologies for making shooting scenes easier for Buono include video editing software like iMovie, Apple Colour, Final Cut Pro and Tiffen DFX.

He also uses scouting tools like the iPhone sunseeker app to see where the sun is going to be on the horizon, or virtual scouting with Google Earth.

Other tech tools that he uses are mountable microphone, view finder, stabiliser and LED lights.

NOT ALL ABOUT TECH

However, Buono says while technology can transform the entire movie making process, it is only an enabler.

He says: “Movie making is more than just using technology. It involves good scripts and cast, and many more that have nothing to do with cameras.”

Buono adds that mastering technology involves plenty of trial and error. “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Learn as much as you can.”