We quickly figured out that while some techniques were super cool, if we shot the cast members that way, this would quickly look more like a post-modern video installation than an SNL title sequence, so we limited our portraiture to only the most flattering techniques and relegated the more experimental ideas to either b-roll or bumpers.įor the cast, that meant two basic techniques: anamorphic lenses subtly distorted through prisms and…lens-whacking. Rhys, Justus and I, along with our coordinators Melanie Bogin and Tom Carley, and office PA/research whiz-kid Louis Leuci, spent about a week brainstorming locations and testing in-camera techniques, including one rather absurd light-writing experiment involving a whisk stuffed with steel wool, doused in lighter fluid and set ablaze (that idea is still in development).
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So in addition to the fifteen unique cast member locations, we had to come up with a minimum of ten unique bumpers, plus all of the b-roll footage to intercut with the portraits for the montage – all of which must adhere to our new in-camera, lo-fi manifesto. The other element of a new title sequence that we have to deliver are the show’s “bumpers” – the interstitial shots that run between the commercial breaks. For this 40th Anniversary season, Rhys wanted to return to the energy of shooting each cast member out-and-about in the city, even going to the extent of asking each cast member for location ideas: “Is there a place in the city where you’d like to shoot your portrait?” – offering the cast members creative investment in the title sequence and resulting in a really fun collaboration. The 2009 sequence lasted three seasons, replaced in 2012 for Season 38 with a new sequence directed by Mary Ellen Matthews that took a studio portrait photography approach. This idea happened to coincide with the DSLR-revolution I shot the entire sequence with a Canon 5DMkII, 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: slow-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?!
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