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Saturday Night Live is a cultural institution. In an era when everything is streamed and nothing seems real, NBCs landmark live sketch comedy show proves that50 years on, it can still offer a thrill to anyone stuck home on the hottest night of the weekend.After five decades, the premise could be dull and anachronistic. Instead, its as fresh as ever, earning its highest rated season premiere in four years. And while its cast is ever-changing, so much of what makes SNL work comes down to its design. From its logo to its photo bumpers to its unmistakable opening montage of New York City.For the past few decades, two friendsSNL photographer Mary Ellen Matthews and Pentagram partner Emily Obermanhave influenced the creative direction of so much of what makes SNL feel like SNL. Its a sensation encapsulated best in the two-minute intro, which transports the viewer from their house in Kansas to glitzy Manhattan. Shot over the course of just a few nights by different directors leading up to each season premiere, the opening credits involve late shoots that often stretch into sunrise, elbowed inside everyones workload for the show. But its also become the mise en scne of SNL itself, the anchor thats bridged half a century of live televised comedy into one cohesive vibe.The brief is always the same: Its the city you love, the party you wish you were at, and the cast you wish you were hanging out with. Thats it, says Oberman. And Lorne Michaelss directive is always, whenever we redo the open, it should feel completely new and completely the same at the same time.[Image: NBC]Rebuilding the SNL brandOberman got her first chance to help on SNL in 1994, when Jim Signorelli gave her a call. Signorelli technically ran the shows film unit, but Oberman describes him as the Capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses) given his seniority on the production, which included overseeing both SNLs intro and its parody commercials that used to always follow the monologue.[Images: NBC]He invited Oberman and her then studio partner Bonnie Siegler to help on a special project. Clear Crystal Pepsi had just come out. He was filming a spot for Crystal Gravy and needed a high-end, corporate graphics treatmentthe work of what he called a type jockey. That was when Oberman learned the rules of normal life didnt apply at SNL, and the buzz of working in an edit bay at 1:00 a.m. with brilliant comedic minds. Oberman and Siegler created several spots over the years, including Cookie Dough Sport and Live Action Smurfs.By 1995, Signorelli asked if the duo wanted to create a new logo. The answer was obviously yes. Their design signaled a seachange in SNLs identity, replacing the manhole-inspired logo from 1988 with a confident SNL sitting atop the shows full name without any spaces in it.SNL logo evolution (from top): 1988, 1995-2005, 2006-2014, 2014-2021, 2022-present.Our big idea was Saturday-Night-Live! You just say it as one word like Don Pardo did the voiceover, says Oberman. Along with the logo work, Oberman began working on the intro titles. One thing that Jim said to us that has always stuck with me was the show should be funny; the titles should not.The titles had always been shot like it was very downtown, gritty, scrappy, she continues. But Saturday Night Live had been around for almost 25 years at that point, and wasnt that scrappy little thing. It was the biggest late night sketch comedy show of all time. So we wanted to make it cool, like Blue Note jazz, which is why the logo looked like this.Since then, Oberman has reimagined the logo four more times (SNL now even has its own typeface called Bass-o-matic) and contributed to the typography of the opener for 30 years now. But thats only a slice of how Oberman has impacted the visual design of the show.1975 [Image: NBC]How credits evolved over 50 seasonsOver the course of season one of NBCs Saturday Night (the original name for SNL), you can watch the show slowly home in on the skeleton of the contemporary opener. From episode one, creatives set the tone as photographer Edie Baskens hand-painted photos of New York nightlife montaged atop a still-familiar, sax-rich theme song by Howard Shore. The biggest difference was that the first week listed the cast in one pile on a single screen. By mid-season, the names were read out over two. And finally, toward the end, the cast was given a full hero treatment as each member was listed with their photo, one at a time.1996 [Image: NBC]That straightforward approach to listing the talent is in line with a core purpose of the SNL opener. Its a place for the cast to be presented, says Matthews. I dont know how else you would do it.But while the season 1 cast had only nine people, it has since ballooned to 17 members.Theres a lot more to get through, which is a reason the opener has doubled in length while also accelerating its pace of presentation. The cuts are faster, and so is the musicwhich has increased by around 100 beats per minute over five decades.1997 [Image: NBC]Its a very long intro, and [we] try to make it speak to an audience whos used to flipping through TikTok, says Mike Diva, who directs shorts on SNL. You look at old SNL sketches from even 10 or 15, years ago. And its like, everything moved so much slower. People had so much patience, and man, now all of our patience has worn thin.All that time is well-used, buying time for the cast and crew to set up behind the scenes. But the viewer is distracted in an ever-modernized media spectacle. Every two or so years since SNLs debut, the opener is reshot with a shift in tone. By 1996, the scrappy live sketch show had a high-style, ritzy NYC makeover. Around the same time (1999), SNL photographer Mary Ellen Matthews took over for Basken following six years of working as his assistant, ushering in the shows modern artistic viewpoint.Matthewss celebrity host portraits shot in Studio 8H each weekranging from beautiful to zany to surrealistserve as the essential bumpers of SNL, offering micro liminal space between the real commercials. They bring a touch of class and visual levity to transition the viewer back from a commercial to live comedy. What I want to bring to my work is joy, she says.[Images: courtesy Emily Oberman]As Oberman continued working at SNL, and Matthews worked closer with Signorelli, the two women gradually discovered a creative chemistrythough Oberman notes, Its all very collaborative, everyone [at SNL] feels like they do the titles. In 2012, they played with segmenting and slicing visuals and, in 2014, they brought NYC to light with influences from Picassos light painting.[Images: NBC]Ive always been a fan of opening credits and titles, and I find it is own art form for sure. I go back to the James Bondness of these things, says Matthews. [Though] funnily enough . . . just started watching something on Netflix with a skip intro, and Im like, Skip! I dont even watch them! But something like the ones weve done, it involves so much, and so many people.In 2010, Matthews asked a simple question that would flip the SNL intro upside-down: What the heck was the cast actually doing in the opener?[Image: NBC]The musics fast-paced, and you really cant just have somebody sitting there having a drink anymore, because Its like the music and that action dont go together, she says. So Matthews asked the cast, What is your New York life like? That led to Fred Armisen poking through records in the West Village and Jason Sudekis playing basketball in Washington Square.Cecily Strong wanted to have her dog in a couple of the opens. And her dog is adorable, so she got to have her dog in them, recalls Obermann. And those are conversations that Mary Ellen handles and deals with. I dont meet with the cast members.Since then, openers have had a touch more vibe of actually doing stuff in NYC, but theyre updated every few years with a new creative brief born from a brainstorm between Matthews and Oberman. Between 2020 and 2022, for instance, the cast was captured making their way back into the studio during the pandemic. Each members name was written by hand in a time when celebrities Zooming from home had introduced a new era of authenticity in entertainment. Then in 2022, they captured the entire cast inside the Chelsea Hotel (look closely and you can appreciate the logistical nightmare that is having multiple cast members together in a single shotgiven that each member of the cast is juggling their own hectic schedule to kick off the season).[Images: courtesy Emily Oberman]In 2018, Matthews and Obermann brainstormed a mashup between French New Wave cinema, a 1960s film movement known for its charming black-and-white surrealism, and New York New Wave, a 1980s art movement mixing media as it is today. They cut inspiration footage together to pitch the idea, and executed what is the most beautiful of the SNL intros to date.Sometime around 2 a.m., Kate McKinnon was standing inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Shes glammed out to the max despite the late hours, looking more like an A-lister than a not quite ready for prime time player. And that single frame was so stunning to producer Steve Higgins that Oberman was given more creative license, and the SNL team approved something it never had before: graphics that, instead of ducking and weaving around the cast, were placed right over someones face.[Image: NBC]The idea of putting type on top of your heros face was a hard sell, says Obermann. By showing this one frame where Kate just looks so beautiful, even with type on her face? They were like, Okay, you can do it.[Image: NBC]Making season 50As SNL entered its 50th season this year, the team already knew they wanted to do something special with the opening credits.The piece kicks off with a flash of five decades of SNL logos in bold redthe color is a preference from Michaels to buck SNLs traditional penchant for aforementioned blue note jazz. And what ensues is a frantically paced, color corrected fever dream that blends type and place, eviscerating the fourth wall.[Images: courtesy Emily Oberman]Lorne really wanted to do something big and different and modern was his thing, because he kept saying, This isnt a nostalgia play, this cast the future of the show . . . this open should be spectacular, recalls Oberman. Mary Ellen and I were sort of charged with, what will this be? But Mike [Diva] had this vision.[Image: NBC]Diva films most of the big pre-taped segments you see on SNLlike Gladiator 2: The Musical and HBO Mario Kartand has been working alongside Matthews and Oberman on the openers since the Chelsea Hotel shoot in 2022.I thought about it a lot over the summer, says Diva. I came up with this idea of playing around with peoples perception of what they have come to know as the format of the SNL intros, while simultaneously wanting to celebrate how the sausage is made. Until I started working here almost four years ago, I didnt fully appreciate how, at the very last minute, these sets are coming together, and theres people flying in chairs and tables and stuff, truly, five seconds before the camera goes on and we see the set. Its magic.What Diva produced is the most ambitious opener SNL has ever run, somehow assembled in a mere five days. Yes, it has all of the tropes weve come to expect in an SNL opener. But it also mixes cast members spending time in real locationsMichael Che eating at a restaurant, Chloe Fineman dancing on a subway, Marcello Hernandea leaping down a fire escapeand then breaks your brain by seamlessly cutting between the real world and a set lovingly reproduced in studio 8H.Its a magic trick, but the show is a magic trick, says Matthews. So that it was a close comparison to what actually happens.Other pieces of the shoot take SNLs love for New York to new heights. The crew pulled a double decker bus into Times Square for Ego Nwodims party scene. Much of the visual energy comes from Divas inspirationMichel Gondry meets Wong Kar-waiand his use of a new DJI Ronin camera, which has a lens that detaches from the main body, allowing him to take us inside a cab with Mikey Day and right up to the bus window with Sarah Sherman.[Image: NBC]For the Times Square beat with Kenan [Thompson], we shot that in like 16 minutes. We literally popped up a green screen in the middle of Times Square and shot Kenan doing different poses, says Diva. We had all these barriers and stuff, but you can imagine Times Square with Kenan Thompson is pretty chaotic.[Image: NBC]The opener was coming together well, but toward the end of a week of sleeping in the studio, Diva realized that while he had all of this amazing footage of the cast, he didnt have enough of the everyday New York B-roll that grounds an SNL intro. Matthews, who Diva describes as a machine gun of ideas, offered him a simple solution filmed in three beats: a woman walking a dog, a guy with a guitar on his back, and someone riding a Citi Bike. Diva called up three of his friends and filmed these scenes with a high end, 360-degree Grand Theft Auto production style. He also grabbed some shots on his iPhone. Realizing his first plan was over-the-top, the iPhone footage was what made it in.Like so much of what makes SNL wonderful, the low-fi solution sneaks by for one reason and one reason alone:You would never know, he laughs.
