Silke Jasso
While we don’t often think about it, “Saturday Night Live” has a pretty impressive special effects team. And like the rest of the crew, the special effects producers have to work incredibly quickly to get the job done. A YouTube video released on April 26 to the show’s channel shows the unseen group working to make the show what we see each week on television.
Videos by Rare
According to the video, “by the time footage gets to the visual-effects team, they have less than 12 hours.” That means in under twelve hours, they have to decide how to make the special effects look real and still keep the iconic show hilarious.
RELATED: One former “Saturday Night Live” cast member has a lot of criticism for the iconic show
The final product that we see every week begins with a pitch meeting on Monday. The group of wildly talented writers (and there are a lot–“SNL” hired eight fresh faces for the 2017 season) each throw out their best ideas. Most of those ideas are scrapped before they hit the floor. Then they rehearse a few of the top picks and weed out even more sketches. Finally, the team settles on a handful of skits that they think are worth broadcasting to millions of people who expect top-notch humor. Only then do those clips get sent to the video crew.
It turns out that a lot of our favorite skits require some special editing. Some you definitely expected (like Dave Chappelle’s head being toppled off by a baseball bat) and others, like the Trump impersonations, we didn’t guess needed a lot of editing. And week after week, the “SNL” special effects team brings their best, from Kristen Wiig climbing out of a television to Rob Lowe decapitated by a ceiling fan.
RELATED: “Saturday Night Live” offers a rare behind-the-scenes clip
