Saturday Night Live Set Design Team Talks Mastering the Time Crunch and Leaving Room

Saturday Night Live production designers Leo Akira Yoshimura and Keith Raywood work at breakneck speed under extraordinarily tight schedules to ensure sets for the timely satire are camera-ready each week with changes being added right up to the very last minute.

“Saturday Night Live” production designers Leo Akira Yoshimura and Keith Raywood work at breakneck speed under extraordinarily tight schedules to ensure sets for the timely satire are camera-ready each week — with changes being added right up to the very last minute.

Raywood, who began as a production designer on the show in 1985, will often start crafting sets late on Wednesday nights. “This show is writer-driven. It all starts with the script,” he says. “One show can have
less complexity to it and fewer special effects are involved, but we never know until it’s handed to us on Wednesday night.”

Other sets will be used for two to three scenes. When Yoshimura introduces people to the show, whether it’s cast or friends visiting, they always comment on the stage size — Studio 8H is just over 6,000 square feet, including space for audience seating — or remark on how swiftly the crew shifts scenery.

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With space and swiftness in mind, the designers begin their work.

An “Avatar” sketch in January featuring host Aubrey Plaza and Heidi Gardner was one example of how a set evolved from conception. Yoshimura, who built the Na’vi planet, had to do something outside of the norm for the scene: “We had to do camera tests to turn the cast blue, which added a layer of technology to the performers.”

He wrapped the trees in aluminum foil, primarily used a Styrofoam cave with landscaping, and added a bird for “a visual layer.”

“We painted leaf shapes, and we rendered exotic colorful flowers, so when the cameras turned blue, it added a saturated pigment,” he says.

It wasn’t until Thursday when Yoshimura saw the camera pull back in rehearsals that he realized something was lacking in the design: “I like to stretch what the camera sees, so I added the pool of foggy water.”

While his work is writer-driven, he says, “The adrenaline of having four days forces you to make things better.”

Both production designers worked alongside the late Eugene Lee, who had been with “SNL” since its 1975 debut and built some of the famous sets, including the “Saturday Night Live: 15th Anniversary” show and “SNL Presents: Halloween.” Lee died earlier this year but his presence remains strong. “His
studio is there, and it feels like it will always be there,” Raywood says.

Yoshimura adds fondly, “Studio 8H was built with his ideas around studio production. There’s something wonderful to be able to say we’re playing in Eugene’s world.”

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