This idea happened to coincide with the DSLR-revolution I shot the entire sequence with a Canon 5DmII, which was the only way we could have captured all of those verite-style, low-light night exteriors at the time. Then, in 2009, we took a very different approach, shooting each cast member in a unique night exterior location. Shooting fifteen different portraits is a tall order and, in years past, the approach has often been to corral the entire cast to one location - a cool bar, a rooftop party scene, a hip nightclub, etc – and shoot everyone out in one long shoot day. The most important task is to introduce the audience to our cast members – in this case, all fifteen of them – and serve as an energetic warm-up for the show.
Bear in mind, our job is not to just create a cool montage of New York-y imagery set to music. This was quickly shaping up to be a venture into experimental photography and I admit to being a little nervous about whether the execs at the show were going to think that we had stepped off the deep end. Rhys and I – along with film unit producer Justus McLarty - brainstormed a list of in-camera techniques to test: slo-motion, tilt-shift, black&white, long-exposure motion blur, double-exposures, light-writing, timelapse, strobe photography, aerial photography, infrared photography, optical aberrations, anamorphic distortions, prism-distortions, etc. It would be low-fi, analog, optical, vintage, classic. Nothing that relies on modern post production techniques or other digital trickery (sorry, hyperlapse’ers). Not just light-writing, but an overall simple, clean concept: as an homage to the 40-year history of SNL, we would approach the sequence using in-camera techniques that would be at home just as well in 1975 as 2014.
It’s pure in-camera trickery…EUREKA! - suddenly we had our approach. In fact, it’s so old-school that when Rhys mentioned it, the first image that came to mind was by Picasso! It’s a technique that’s as old as photography. Light-writing is just what you’re thinking: a light-source is traced in the air using a long-exposure. We bandied about a lot of different ideas: what about hyperlapse – have you seen the incredible videos by Rob Whitworth? What about super slo-mo – have you seen what the new Phantom4K can do? For me, the break-through finally came when Rhys mentioned a pretty obscure idea: “ There’s this group in Germany doing really cool things with light-writing.” Uh, did you say light-writing?! What can we do this year that we haven’t done before? Are there any cool new camera techniques that we can test? What’s the overall approach / concept? Is there a narrative thread or is it pure montage? It’s a tough challenge to come up with yet another new and interesting way to shoot what is often the exact same night exterior locations. Rhys and I started chatting about the title sequence early in the summer as well. The idea was to honor the 40-year history of the show with something classic and iconic, a little more dressed-up than previous seasons and with typography that was integrated into the cityscape. Our director, Rhys Thomas, spent the summer collaborating with our logo design team at Pentragram Design, led by Emily Oberman, and with our portrait photographer, Mary Ellen Mathews, on a new logo and font design along with a set of mood-boards to experiment with the overall tone of the sequence. The passing of Don Pardo - the legendary voice of SNL since 1975 - only amplified the feeling that this new sequence needed to be something extra special.Īs always, the titles are a huge team effort. Especially when it’s the 40th Anniversary season. While the usual shoot is a dead sprint from Thursday thru Saturday night, every few years we produce a new Title Sequence and that sprint becomes a 3-week non-stop marathon. …And we’re back! After a much-needed summer hiatus, it’s that time of the year again when my comrades in the SNL Film Unit all reconvene on the 17 th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza for another season of filmmaking speed-drills.
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