Image courtesy of alex-buono.com
Veteran filmmaker Alex Buono has worked on Saturday Night Live for over a decade, currently serving as the long-running late-night staple’s Director of Photography. During the summer hiatus from SNL, Buono decided to launch a series of full-day workshops around the country, in which he works with budding filmmakers to teach them about visual storytelling. (You can track his Visual Storytelling Tour via updates on blog and on his Twitter.) We caught up with Buono during the tour to get the low-down on how things are going.
Shutterstock: How’s everything going on the road so far?
Buono: I couldn’t be happier with how the tour is going. I’ve never done a workshop prior to this, so I had no idea what to expect. Part of me was nervous that no one would even show up! The attendance has been amazing, and the attendees themselves have been so enthusiastic. It’s actually been a lot more fun than I was expecting.
How did you end up at Saturday Night Live?
Buono: I started at SNL back in 1999, after a very fortunate connection with a producer named Lisa Ruffler who was working there at the time. I was hired to shoot a low-budget indie feature in North Carolina that summer, which Lisa happened to be producing. We got along really well, and, at the end of the shoot, she asked if I’d like to try shooting a commercial parody at SNL. A very lucky break, but also a great demonstration about how this business is all about personal relationships.
What’s your take on visual design? Why is it so important to master?
Buono: The type of visual design that I’m teaching in my workshop is all about creating visual structure that parallels the story structure. Movies are a visual storytelling medium, and it’s so vital to understand how to support the narrative with images. Visual storytelling is about so much more than just recording the dialogue and action as written in the script. It’s about understanding the narrative rhythm of the script, then finding a way to support that rhythm with visuals. This is the most essential function of our jobs as visual storytellers: support the story!
You’ve shown an eclectic range in your work. What’s the advantage to working on such a variety of projects?
Buono: Working for the Saturday Night Live Film Unit has given me an incredible opportunity to experiment with different styles. Every week is something new — a Hollywood romantic comedy, a pharmaceutical commercial, a darkly comedic short film, a documentary. While other TV shows are all about establishing a look and then maintaining it every week, I’ve been able to explore the visual style of many different genres and formats. At the same time, our turnaround schedules are so incredibly tight that it’s helped me develop the ability to identify and create a lot of different looks in a very short amount of time — which only helps my personal projects outside of SNL.
How do you choose which personal projects to film when the show is on hiatus?
Buono: Over the past few years, I’ve been transitioning into more of a producer/DP role on my projects; and, even more recently, into a writer/producer/DP. So the projects I choose during my time off are projects that I’ve been shepherding from the start — my own projects that I have either found or developed with my partner, Tamsin Rawady, through our production company, Third Person. We’re actually in the middle of developing a new documentary right now!
As you know, Shutterstock has over one million stock footage clips. How have you made use of stock footage in your professional career?
Buono: Stock footage has been a staple of many of the projects I’ve worked on, both at SNL and in my personal work. My documentary Bigger Stronger Faster contained over 1,500 archival shots! The bottom line is that we can’t possibly produce every image in every project we make. At SNL, the schedules are literally only a couple of days, and obviously limited to New York locations, so if a script calls for an establishing shot of London, we have no choice but to use stock footage. On the other hand, on a documentary, I may have more time, but also more limited resources. The quality of the stock footage at Shutterstock is high enough that it often doesn’t make sense to try to recreate what has already been so expertly executed.
Visual storytelling is a hot topic these days. Is there a reason everyone’s suddenly referencing it?
Buono: Visual storytelling is as old as mankind — it’s existed for as long as we’ve been scratching out images on cave walls. I think that highly visual directors, like Kubrick, Fincher, and Mann, utilize the rules of visual storytelling instinctively. Their natural gift for visual structure is what made them great directors in the first place. For the rest of us, for whom it may not come as instinctively, visual storytelling can absolutely be formalized and learned. I think it’s one of the most important lessons in all of filmmaking.
What do you hope attendees will gain from spending the day with you?
Buono: I hope the basic concepts that I use to approach my own work resonate with my attendees. We have so many generous sponsors who have loaned us so much incredible equipment, yet I’m certain that none of them would ever suggest that filmmaking is all about simply having the best new gear. These are all wonderful tools — to be mastered, just like the tools of any art form — but at the end of the day, filmmaking is about translating a story into images. So, for me, the heart of this tour is about introducing my attendees to the basic concepts of visual structure.