The Emmy-Nominated Editors Behind SNL's Physical Comedy

Live from New York, it's Saturday Night! Since 1975, those seven words have rung through homes, bringing friends and family together to laugh. SNL celebrated its 50th anniversary with a celebrity-filled extravaganza chock full of skits, montages, and digital shorts worthy of its iconic run.

The six-member editing team behind the "Physical Comedy" segment is currently Emmy-nominated for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming (Segment).

We chatted with Ryan Spears (Film Unit Editor), Paul Del Gesso (Film Unit Editor), Christopher Salerno (Film Unit Editor), Daniel Garcia (Editor), Sean McIlraith (Editor), and Ryan McIlraith (Editor), to discover how the segment came to be, what it took to cut it down to four minutes(!), which characters make them do a spittake, and how they use Sapphire in their workflow. 

Congrats on your Emmy nomination! How does it feel to have the entire team nominated?

It is such an honor for us to receive this nomination as a group. This nomination came from the hard work of several generations of SNL editors reuniting to help bring the 50th Special to life. To collaborate on such a historic milestone together and receive this recognition for it feels like a dream come true for the entire team.

SNL "Physical Comedy" editors, L-R: Paul Del Gesso, Ryan Spears, Danny Garcia, Chris Salerno, Sean McIlraith, and Ryan McIlraith

The“Physical Comedy” is an epic montage featuring some of SNL’s most iconic characters and skits. How did the idea come about for the segment? What was the overall project timeline from ideation to the completed segment?

There were dozens of segment ideas that came out of the initial brainstorming process for the 50th. Many of the show’s current and returning creatives and producers ideated topics for a variety of video segments.

Many of these were either left on the cutting room floor, combined, or even abandoned throughout the process, which began a little over a month before the special aired. 

From there, these ideas were honed in and whittled down as many more legacy writers and creatives would give their input. But in typical SNL fashion, the vast majority of the work took place within the week leading up to the special, thanks to the fast-paced workflow the team is used to. It cannot be stressed enough that these edits are truly never locked until they are being broadcast through the airwaves — every spare moment up until the literal last second is used to tweak and perfect each piece. 

Oz Rodriguez, a longtime film unit director from years past, returned to the show to serve as Creative Director for these segments. It was clear early on that the “Physical Comedy” segment was a favorite for everyone. It highlights the immense talent of some of the show’s most gifted performers in a fun and nuanced way, and many aspects of the previously abandoned concepts were able to be used to build upon the narrative.

Six editors worked on this segment. Can you dig into how you worked together as a team and as individuals? 

The origins of many of these segments truly started out as nothing more than a loose idea. From there, we as editors were given extreme leeway to bring these loose ideas to life. In the instance of “Physical Comedy,” this meant combing through the vast archives to find the best moments to fill out the piece. Hundreds of episodes of television spanning half a century. We all set to work pulling individual iconic bits and finding creative ways to support the larger narrative of the piece. 

At the same time, we were all contributing to the other retrospective pieces, and when some eventually fell by the wayside, the best and most relevant content from those migrated to “Physical Comedy.” It was a very collaborative and rewarding effort to shape the final piece. The individual sections of the edit would be worked on and ultimately paired together to create the entire segment.  From there, the edit would be passed around to address new notes and ideas, as some of us were predisposed to working on the other segments and pretapes. It was a highly collaborative work environment and extremely rewarding.

Behind the scenes: SNL editing suite

There are over 950 episodes of SNL, chock full of bits to pull from. How many hours of footage did you look through?  What was that process like?

We all have our favorite SNL moment; memorable bits that we witnessed live as kids, catching reruns of episodes that aired well before we were born, and even just falling down the occasional YouTube rabbit hole. The show’s Post-Production Supervisor, Matt Yonks, as well as Post Coordinator, Rachel Labianca, spent the time leading up to the show finding iconic moments from SNL’s history that could apply to many of the larger concepts. This gave us a huge advantage and head start at the beginning. 

SNL also has an impressive searchable archive that we could utilize to find sketches tagged by keyword, writer, cast member, etc. And when we had the time, we would screen full episodes for the chance to find a forgotten gem. Mainly, we each took the initiative to find concepts that felt appropriate within the larger umbrella of Physical Comedy, such as Chris Farley’s greatest falls, Chevy Chase's cold opens, dance-related sketches, etc.

SNL: The Blues Brothers

Were there any assistant editors involved? If so, how important was their role? What type of tasks did they complete?  

Our assistant editors, Katie Higgins, Kristie Ferriso, Nahuel Attar, and Mak Makower, are our lifelines. They are essential to the process every single week, and without their constant help, the pretapes could not function. Their importance cannot be overstated. They do everything from ingest, string out, make line-by-line sequences, mix prep, and color conform to running to get us food because we literally do not have time to leave our chairs, and much more. 

They also function pretty well as therapists. The assistant editors at the show are the sole link between the edit, the colorists, the VFX artists, the mixers, and often the control room that plays down the edits live. It is a substantially greater role at this show than any other project we’ve been a part of. It's highly technical and extremely fast paced, and it sometimes resembles that of a producer role. All glory goes to our AEs.

SNL: Taste Test

You had to contend with different formats from over the decades. Were you searching through videotapes mixed with digital video content? Has everything been digitized over the years?

We have an amazing show archive on the shared server made possible by Matt Yonks, Rachel Labianca, and Michael DeProspo. You wouldn’t believe the level of organization and detail. Everything we needed was already on the server in some capacity. Sometimes they would have to transfer some very specific segments, stems, or pieces of a project from a deeper archive, but it is astonishing that we have access to such an organized and easy-to-navigate vault considering the amount of personnel change and technological advancements from over five decades. They truly ensured every episode of SNL was digitized and at the ready for us.

SNL: Weekend Update

Rhythm and pacing play a giant role in both physical comedy and editing. Can you talk about the overall pacing of the segment? How did you decide which clips to put where in the timeline? 

It was a winding path to finding the rhythm of this tribute montage. There was no other choice but to watch down a lot of footage, make selects, and then start putting those selects together. We worked our way through the understanding that certain cast members, like Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Molly Shannon, and Chris Farley, need to be featured in their beats since their physical prowess on the show is what they are most closely associated with. Then from there, we started to put our heads together in terms of subject matters like dancing, pretapes, and an in memoriam tribute. Once those segments were assembled, we had already done the hard work of combing through the decades of footage and pulling selects. It became a game of plug-and-play in terms of having your selects and cutting them together by subject matter, then combining each subject into the timeline and finding the natural flow from start to finish.

The ending montage centered around the famous “Dancing in the Dark” sketch with Gilda Radner and Steve Martin was a standout moment for us. In line with the weight of celebrating such a momentous milestone, we wanted to end this segment on a poignant and sincere moment that paid tribute to those no longer with us. Using the “Dancing in the Dark” sketch as a foundation, we had to figure out what specific clips to overlay on top of Steve and Gilda’s dancing. The interplay between the humor and emotion of them dancing, intercut with the Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks sketch “Love Is a Dream,” felt natural and the right way to pace the piece down to its end. 

SNL: Dancing in the Dark

We then decided to layer in and slow down some moments from other famous sketches, such as “More Cowbell” and “The Blues Brothers.” Choosing what moments to showcase and paring it all to a reasonable time so we could get the bookends of Gilda and Steve noticing each other, to them finishing the dance was a challenge, but we are ultimately happy with how it turned out. We’re really proud that we were able to instill some emotion into the night. It’s a good representation of SNL’s more nuanced side and shows that certain cast members could use physicality in both humorous and heartfelt ways.

SNL: More Cowbells

How many different iterations of the segment did you go through? Were you continually operating under a specific time length?

Like most things at SNL, the montages and pretapes for the 50th came together quickly and were mostly worked on during the week of the show. We knew the final video probably couldn’t be much longer than four minutes, so the cut started out very long, and over the days leading up the show, we whittled it down to its final form. Oz Rodriguez was heavily involved in curating the final clips featured and putting us all to work on different aspects of the piece.

How did music choice affect the edit? 

Music was instrumental to this piece. As the edit began to take shape with selected clips and assembled segments, we further dialed it in by choosing musical tracks that kept the pace moving and upbeat. For library tracks, we relied on APM and were mainly focused on sourcing songs that were heavy on percussion with a swinging jazz feel. For example, the two jazz drum tracks chosen for the opening sequence of Chevy falling and the segment towards the end that highlights the moments from the pretaped shorts, we used the splits from the music tracks and timed the various falls and hits with drum rolls leading into cymbal crashes. 

The only famous song we landed on using was Haddaway’s “What Is Love.” It’s such an iconic track from one of the show’s most well-known recurring sketches. We felt like it was the perfect way to showcase various examples of cast members dancing throughout the years. As soon as the first line hits and we start dollying in on the Butabi brothers while dipping in and out of black, the audience starts to cheer. It really energizes the piece.

SNL: The Roxbury Guys

What was the overall most significant challenge on the project?

The biggest challenge was combing through all of the seasons of SNL, making selects, and then figuring out a way to meld these different sketches and generations of cast members into one cohesive whole that feels like the definitive showcase of physical comedy throughout the show’s history. Not to mention setting out to accomplish that goal in 4 minutes of screentime on SNL’s breakneck schedule!

What’s your favorite clip from the project? Anyone or anything that makes you laugh the hardest?

Molly Shannon’s commitment to throwing herself into chairs as her character Mary Katherine Gallagher is absolutely a group favorite. She is a force of nature that sacrificed life and limb to make audiences laugh. The ending montage is also a standout as it injected some authentic emotion into an otherwise fast-tempoed and loud piece. It really got the edit room buzzing.

One of the best parts of working on the special was witnessing how these clip segments would spin the entire room off on random tangents and stories of generations past. Every time a new producer or creative saw an iteration of the cut, there would be stories and memories shared from throughout the history of the show.  It truly was a special time for everyone involved at every level.

SNL: Mary Katherine Gallagher

You have access to Sapphire in your Premiere Pro workflow. Which effects did you use on “Physical Comedy” — and why?

Creatively, we chose to frame this tribute montage as if the audience was playing back a VHS tape from a past decade. This made sense as most of us got acquainted with the show by watching old bootlegs on YouTube or watching the “Best Of” DVDs. Using Sapphire’s VHS Damage effect on the opening title was a quick way to sell this concept to the audience. We also utilized Sapphire’s Camera Shake effect specifically for the moment where, at the end of Chevy's tribute, he raises his head into frame, and we pause as if a VHS tape paused. Adding that slight shake just helps sell the authenticity of some of these clips being of a past analog format, and that we’re taking the audience back in time.

SNL: Chevy Chase

What Sapphire features do you typically use on SNL?

It runs the gamut based on the needs of the sketch, since each one can be so different. Ranging from music videos to commercial parodies to newscasts, etc. Each sketch requires an entirely new set of tools. We do use mosaic a lot for censorship purposes, whether it is to block an expletive or to hide nudity. Blurs and flares are also used quite a bit for music videos, helping to stylize and set each one apart. On a basic level, too, we often use Sapphire dissolves because they give us smooth, cinematic, and fine-tuned results.

You also used another Boris FX product, Mocha AE, on the “Anxiety” digital short. Can you give some details on how you used it?

Our incredible in-house VFX team regularly replaces screens or tracks other scene elements. “Anxiety” had tons of retro TVs that needed tracking and inserting vintage clips within them, so they leaned heavily on Mocha AE to get rock-solid tracking done fast. 

SNL: What Up With That

What are some of the other notable SNL digital shorts/projects you’ve worked on over the years? 

RYAN S: “Mario Kart” was one of my favorites and one of the most recognized pieces of the last decade. The style and amount of work from every department that went into it was just off the charts and set a new bar for the show. Music videos are also a bread and butter piece for the show, and one of my favorites was “I’m Just Pete” which was a take on “I’m Just Ken” written by the uber-talented Dan Bulla and Streeter Seidel. “Beppo” is just a solid emotional rollercoaster of a short film involving a puppet monkey and a set that looks like Apollo 13. What more could you ask for?

SEAN: “Papyrus” is special to me because I was 26 at the time it aired and had only graduated to the SNL edit chair the season prior. It reminds me of a time in my life that was so creatively rewarding and fun, but enormously stressful. Two other standouts I cut and love are “Grouch” and “Three Sad Virgins,” both of which are drastically different in style, but equally showcase the unmatched talent and production value of SNL’s Film Unit, who pull it all off in an insanely condensed timeframe week after week. Best in the biz!

RYAN M: “Stu” is one of the pretapes I look back on most fondly. It didn’t wrap until 6 A.M. on Saturday, so it was a sprint to finish for air that night, but I was lucky that Paul Del Gesso helped me the whole way through. The script was really great, and we knew if we could do it, people would love it. And they did! I also love “Home for the Holidays” with Eddie Murphy. My brother was supposed to cut that one, but he ended up getting sick, so I hopped in the edit chair at the last minute and now it’s one of the sketches I often revisit and really enjoy. Both of these are holiday pieces, so I’m sensing a theme here.

DANIEL: “Hard Seltzer” is a favorite of mine, as it was the first video Please Don’t Destroy filmed for SNL and no one knew what to expect — their personal brand of rapid-fire comedy has become an absolute staple of the show. Another highlight was the “Dr. Anthony Fauci Cold Open” (featuring Brad Pitt) for the second SNL at Home show produced during Covid. Editing in my apartment with footage shot entirely off-site during the height of the pandemic was no small feat, but a very special one when the piece was able to bring some joy to people in a dark time.

PAUL: “Bad Bunny is Shrek,” “Papyrus 2” alongside Christopher Salerno, and “Bowen’s Straight.” 

CHRISTOPHER: One of the other sketches I cut for the 50th Special, “Chad in 8H,” was pretty meaningful, as it featured original cast member Laraine Newman and paid tribute to the rest of that legendary first ensemble, while still capturing the classic, childish humor that defines a Chad piece. Another recent favorite was “The Age of Discovery” with Bad Bunny, which stood out as it was entirely in Spanish and represented the show’s evolving reach to audiences beyond native English speakers.

SNL: Single Ladies

Is there anything else you’d like to share about working on the project or SNL in general?

Along with all the wonderful cast and crew we get the pleasure of working with every week, we’d like to shout out Rob Callahan and IATSE Local 700 for their continuous support. We would also like to acknowledge our talented VFX team and congratulate them on their recent successful unionization effort.