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Every now and again Alex Buono, cinematographer for the Saturday Night Live Film Unit does a lengthy write-up on one the sketches he's shot for SNL. Here he does just that for their 'Her' parody.
HOW WE DID IT: SNL – “ME” | Alex Buono
Young cinematographers take note: stop hogging the whole budget with your precious lights and camera gear!  Give the budget to the art department and I guarantee they will make your job much easier than all those fancy toys.  I was given a lot of very nice compliments about the look of our Wes Anderson spot but the truth is, the art direction was so perfect that all it took was a simple bounce light and we were lit.




Why Hollywood Will Never Look the Same Again on Film: LEDs Hit the Streets of LA & NY | No Film School
The LEDs should very well prove a benefit to existing-light photography — better for the environment, and in nearly every case, better for cinematography. Whether the new look is visually preferable is a subjective matter, but you probably won’t find as many proponents for the old one.


How To Capture Long Smooth Running-In-The-Meadow Scenes | DIY Photography
The rig is made from a trapezoid Aluminum with 2 grooved scooter wheels, and it smoothly slides across 100 meters of 3mm Dyneema rope. (The rope has to have some downwards angle to pull on the rig, so you better know your nuts - Matt used a Double Bowline Knot and an Alpine Butterfly knot).


Netflix to spend $3bn on TV and film content in 2014 | The Guardian
Its annual report, published this week, shows that at the end of 2013, Netflix had run up $7.3bn in "streaming content obligations", which are incurred when the company signs a licence agreement for programming, up 30% from the $5.6bn owed at the end of 2012.


What Can You Learn from 8 Sundance Films with Successful Crowdfunding Campaigns? | No Film School
Dear White People raised their funds primarily through inexpensive twitter shout-outs from a sizable audience of 1,318 funders, while A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night succeeded with a fraction of the supporters who donated for high value rewards like classy soirees and rare posters.


Sundance Cinematographers Tell Indiewire The Best and Worst Advice They Received | IndieWire
"A camera operator once told me that you're not hired because you know the gear or the technical process better than someone else, you're hired because you communicate with the actors and director better than someone else. I find this to be very true. Communication is probably 90% of what I do." -- Cinematographer James Laxton


Screen Replacement in After Effects | Pro Video Coalition
Applying a blur effect to the new screen to recreate the depth of field blur visible on the original screen in the shot; for bonus points, use a variable blur like Camera Lens Blur and drive this effect with a gradient to vary the amount of blur across the screen


Case Study: Engineering a Unique Live Broadcast Facility for Clear Channel at the iHeartRadio Theater Los Angeles | AbelCine
AbelCine recommended 4K-capable Sony F55 cameras because they offered the precise combination of cinematic look and broadcast features that Clear Channel required.


WebM in Premiere and After Effects | Pro Video Coalition
Brendan Bolles of fnord software released beta versions of open source WebM and Theora plug-ins for Premiere that allow import and export of WebM movies through Adobe Media Encoder. And that common Mediacore plug-in bundle also lets you import WebM, with the new VP9 codec for Ultra HD, into After Effects and export through Adobe Media Encoder (AME).

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