#snl digital short

[dogwood-designs]

Dear Sister, by the time you read this-

🎶 mmm whatcha say 🎶

🎶 mmm whatcha say🎶

[musicallyseducingallthehotties]

Did you know there's over a billion people in the world?

There's over a million in New York alone!

But the only one I'm into is my best friend Ninja Brian!

(context) (source)

[juniorjules]

Pov you ask me what my “type” is and I make you watch this entire video

[perfect-ly-island-y]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl)

Uhmmm.... Yes please?

[fuckyeahforte]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast (@lonelymeyerspod)

[jasonz]

The 100th SNL Digital Short

[lightgaswaterelectricityrent]

How can people watch this for serious

[stephaniejuhnay]

Completely forgot about this digital short which is one of my favorites. It is 100% Jorma Taccone coded and also Daniel's name in the sketch is Daniel and I find that SO FUNNY given my current protest 😂

[shmreduplication]

Shawn and Gus on Psych and Turk and JD on Scrubs and every Lonely Island SNL digital short

what was going on men in the mid '00s to early '10s

[gazebo-components]

Improv Is Cool Now: reflections on the past, present, and future of improv on the internet

DISCLAIMER: this is LONG -- not because it’s comprehensive or correct, but because I have a lot of thoughts. i am not an authority on improv, i just like it. these are some things i have noticed & been thinking about over the last couple years.

TLDR: the world of digital comedy is getting increasingly improv-ified. because of this, improv is forced to adapt to digital forms, which is sometimes awkward but (i think) generally very exciting! it's taking on a new life and reaching more people than ever before and it's maybe... even... cool now ? i investigate dropout’s and smosh’s recent improv ventures to find an answer and then i talk a little bit about saturday night live. also, there's color-coding.

IMPROV OVERVIEW

- Basically there are 3 big improv schools/theaters that are seen as launching-off points for comedy stardom: Second City, Groundlings, and Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB). SNL hires from them, a bunch of famous comedians have come from them, etc. Of course there are other schools and other ways to “make it” in sketch/improv, and many people have critiqued the school system for being gatekeepy/culty, but the big 3 schools are pretty much the center of the improv/sketch world. 

- The big 3 each have their own class tracks for sketch and improv that can eventually lead to auditions for house teams, which are SUPER competitive. At UCB you audition for Harold teams (improv) and Maude teams (sketch). At Groundlings you audition for Sunday Company and are then possibly invited to join the main company. I know the least about Second City but I think you audition for a touring company & are then possibly invited to join the main company? IDK.

- I cannot stress how competitive these auditions are, at all 3 schools. Over 1000 people audition for UCB Harold teams every year and less than 1% get a spot. Getting on a house team is a BIG FUCKIN DEAL. 

- There are (basically speaking) 2 kinds of improv: short-form (more structured: games, wacky characters) and long-form (less structured: scenes, plotlines). Short-form is often seen as "easier" and more palatable for a non-improv audience than long-form, which can be really esoteric and confusing and hard to watch. Groundlings and Second City focus on short-form & sketch, UCB Harold is long-form, UCB Maude is sketch.

RECORDED/TELEVISED IMPROV

- Improv on TV, especially long-form, has historically not been good or successful — UCB experiments with recording/televising longform shows in the 2000s, but nothing really goes mainstream. One exception is Whose Line Is It Anyway (a short-form show by Second City alums), which runs from 1998-2007 and is pretty popular. Whose Line comes back in 2013 but is on shaky shaky ground, might be over now? IDK.

- 2020: Recorded longform improv has its first big moment in Ben Schwartz and shitty guy Thomas Middleditch (both former UCB Harold performers), whose special Middleditch and Schwartz prompts Vulture to ask, “What if improv were good?" IMO, this is the point where Improv Starts Being Cool.

DROPOUT

- Early CollegeHumor team is full of improv comedians, mostly UCB. Many (Brennan, Siobhan, Trapp, Ally, Zac, Grant, etc…) have been on Harold/Maude teams.

- 2020-ish: Big dramatic CollegeHumor -> Dropout shift; one major takeaway is that unscripted content does much better than scripted content. Dropout pivots to focus on unscripted, eventually premiering Make Some Noise, a short-form show often compared to Whose Line. (Sam Reich says MSN has brought more people to Dropout than any other show.)

- 2022-2023: Dropout introduces multiple longform improv shows, including Play It By Ear and Very Important People (both hosted by UCB Harold performers). VIP performs exceptionally well and is even submitted for Emmy consideration.

- 2023: Wayne Brady from Whose Line appearing on MSN is a MAJOR passing-the-torch moment for improvisers. Wayne tells Sam that only two productions have ever gotten filmed improv right: Whose Line and Dropout.

- 2024: Dropout Presents, a set of original comedy specials, includes 2 longform improv shows: Bigger! With Brennan And Izzy and From Ally To Zacky -- a performance by Yeti, a graduated UCB Harold team made up mostly of Dropout regulars.

- TAKEAWAY: DROPOUT IS DOING MORE LONGFORM. I mean, they're doing more of a lot of stuff, including short-form. But VIP and the longform Dropout Presents specials indicate a willingness to try recorded longform à la Middleditch and Schwartz, which makes perfect sense given that so many of them were/are UCB Harold performers. Will it pay off?? We'll see!!

SMOSH

- 2016: Smosh’s first Try Not To Laugh, a version of the improv game Bus Stop/Park Bench. To my knowledge, the cast at this time has no one from the big 3 improv schools -- of course, this does not mean they aren’t good improvisers (because clearly they are!), just that Smosh isn’t connected to the traditional improv world at this point.

- 2020: Smosh hires its first professionally trained improvisers as cast members: Ify (UCB), who eventually leaves to do a bunch of Dropout stuff, Jacklyn (Second City), who eventually leaves to join Second City NY, and Amanda (Groundlings), who was on Sunday Company and gets on a UCB Maude team in 2022. In other words, they’re all excellent school-trained improvisers.

- 2022: Smosh hires two UCB sketch/improv performers, Angela and Chanse, who were on a Maude team together with Smosh writer Patrick McDonald and editor Josh Fleury.

- 2023: Anthony comes back and they start doing old-school sketches that incorporate the rest of the cast. They do ok, but unscripted content like TNTL continues to be more popular (echoing Dropout’s experience)

- 2024: Angela and Chanse are announced to host the variety/sketch/improv show Bit City. The first episode contains 2 sketches, a 10-minute character improv piece from Amanda, and a 10-minute reunion (semi-improvised). The cast are clearly very excited about being involved in "traditional" sketch/improv (as opposed to just being in pit/games stuff).

- TAKEAWAY: SMOSH IS GETTING MORE INTO TRADITIONAL IMPROV. Try Not To Laugh continues to be one of their most popular series, Bit City is being extremely hyped up, and the cast has gone to multiple Groundlings workshops together. My guess is that Smosh will stick to short-form, because their audience is less comedy-nerd-y than Dropout's and none of the Smosh cast are UCB Harold alums (remember, Angela and Chanse were on a Maude [sketch] team, and Amanda did Groundlings, which is short-form and sketch). Again, this doesn't mean they can't do long-form (they definitely can), but I do think their skills/interests lie mainly in sketch and character/short-form improv.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE

- SNL is decidedly not an improv show, because improv is much scarier to do on live broadcast television than sketch is, but it is still a live show and historically many of its performers have been improvisers. Again, SNL hires improvisers almost exclusively from the big 3 theaters.

- SNL undergoes an identity crisis around 2020-2022 as many well-loved cast members (many of whom are improvisers) leave, hiring mainly standup comedians, not improvisers, to replace them

- Current SNL cast improvisers: Bowen Yang (UCB), Chloe Fineman (Groundlings), Ego Nwodim (UCB), Mikey Day (Groundlings), Heidi Gardner (Groundlings), Chloe Troast (indie, to my knowledge!). The rest are stand-ups, or are named Colin or Kenan.

- TAKEAWAY: SNL IS SAME OLD SAME OLD, BUT... Lorne Michaels is speculated to leave after this season (50), discussions of a “new era” and major shifts for the show. Possible replacements include Tina Fey and Seth Meyers (both are career improvisers, unlike Lorne) — could SNL incorporate improv in the future? Again, historically difficult because of broadcast television rules, but idk, it's an interesting thought

CONCLUSION

- improv is cool now! more and more digital comedy productions are turning towards improv, maybe a reflection of greater desire for authenticity/humanness on the internet? idk.

- the big 3 theaters continue to be a driving force of the improv world, despite some people's desires to move away from that kind of institutional importance. UCB in particular is being showcased a lot because of dropout, though idk if that translates to anything in the real world.

- dropout is doing more longform (yay!!) and is making their real-life improv connections/teams/relationships more explicit with filmed live improv shows and bringing in established groups of improvisers like Improvised Shakespeare.

- the current smosh cast contains three classically trained improvisers, and the channel seems to be making moves towards traditional improv in the style of the big 3 schools, but will probably stick to shortform. (also, no, the smosh-dropout merger is not happening anytime soon.)

- young people think SNL is cringe now (imo it's just as cringe as it ever was... live sketch is HARD). the show will have to make some major changes if it wants to stay relevant, and they'll be looking to the success of digital comedy as inspiration and competition. my prediction: after season 50 they'll do a big overhaul, get a new young host, might even poach a couple Dropout stars.

- there’s A LOT OF stuff I didn't get into: the evolution of standup/crowdwork/recorded standup specials, SNL hiring trends over the years, the pandemic + comedy (particularly TikTok sketch), the Smosh Sitcom Live, what the hell a Harold even is and why it matters. this is already very long and i am, frankly, very tired.

FURTHER READING:

UCB Harold/Maude rosters -- command-f your favorite dropout people to see who they were on a team with

Improv Nation -- the ultimate improv history book; i read it my sophomore year of high school and i was obsessed

this guy’s blog post about wayne brady on MSN

this breakdown of SNL cast member origins up to 2013, which ends with a series of wildly incorrect predictions (fewer standups, no internet performers)

thanks for reading!

[marisatomay]

I think what’s extra appalling about this—beyond the fact that SNL held a candlelight vigil when Ukraine was attacked by Russia just for comparison—is that the host on an episode of SNL, in this case Timothee Chalamet, doesn’t just give a thumbs up to the sketches, the host (and their retinue of PR people and agents) and Lorne Michaels (with the approval of NBC) handpick the sketches from dozens presented to them which are then dress rehearsed and sometimes cut or altered if they don’t play well for the dress rehearsal audience. And this particular sketch was a digital short so it was filmed and edited and screened for presumably many, many people prior to the episode airing. The number of people who saw this concept, this sketch and approved it to air is astronomical. And it did air.

[nostalgc]

Taylor Swift in SNL Digital Short “Firelight”.

[whiteshipnightjar]

The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers launching a podcast about their SNL Digital Shorts. Every Monday starting April 8th

[cromwelll]

I wish people realized that you can mourn the tragedy that was 9/11 without being jingoistic and/or glorifying the U.S. military. It’s okay to be sad about the loss of life and the huge downward spiral that we are still in the midst of and also wish death on everyone in the Bush Administration. Like yes, make fun of how 9/11 is used as a cudgel and as an excuse for bigotry, but there’s no reason to make fun of dead civilians. I just think this kind of nuance is important. Two things can be true at the same time.

Edit to add: For example, I personally found the Osama bin Laden-Barbie meme to be hilarious. As well as this pizza meme. And this dating profile meme. Or this Seinfeld meme. Andy Samberg’s SNL digital short song about bin Laden also always cracks me up.

[kushblazer666]

you: are a barb because of nicki’s monster verse. or her albums. or because youre gay and a huge bitch who loves fighting or something idk

me: is a barb because of the snl digital short digital short “the creep” featuring john waters

[westerberg]

Can i ask ur thoughts on please dont destroy i just kno u will have the right take

okay... I had only seen a couple naturally thro my SNL watching but after watching a few more on youtube here are my thoughts (this is going to be self indulgent but I WAS asked.)

I remember being a bit skeptical of Good Neighbor at first being such a Lonely Island fan but I think by a couple years in I was onboard (I think I remember Chris Fitzpatrick being a big moment for me.) Also I was like 12. So I'm just prefacing this with I think I can give a full judgement as they have been on for a while.

Setting nearly every sketch in their writers room is incredibly lazy and uncreative

All previous "Digital Short" creators in the past (including Brooks, if we wanted) had some sort of clear reason for needing to film their sketches rather than doing them live. All of their sketches take place in one location and have very simple sketch premises-- the only reason they're filmed is because they're reliant on Tiktok style editing for their beats to land-- if they were filmed live the weakness of most of the jokes and all of the acting would be much clearer to everyone.

I was going to say "they don't have a cutiepie like Kyle Mooney or Andy Samberg" but when I thought about it I realized I meant none of them have any personality or charisma as far as I can tell. Their personalities are white guy on tiktok.

I do like a number of Youtubers that went TV like the previously mentioned + Workaholics, but what makes them interesting is they were using an unconventional platform to do unconventional comedy... Tiktok is very rewarding of instant understanding/gratification and thus their work becomes much less interesting, even if it is occasionally funny, and there's no element of experimentation or weirdness, which to me, is what made the Digital Shorts the best part of SNL.

They aren't horrible at sketch writing but their voice doesn't feel well developed and they rely too much old tired sketch beats for me to be very interested esp since they are all such shitty actors

Let me compare them to "worst Lonely Island sketch ever," Daiquiri Girl. No, it's not "good," but it is fun to watch because both Andy and the editing style have so much personality and charm, and it's just not the kind of thing you normally see on TV. All of the Please Don't Destroy sketches I watched were "fine," but they will never reach the highs of Lonely Island because they lack that certain something that makes Daiquiri Girl transcend it's shittiness.

Okay I hope you weren't hoping I would say I love them <3 Thank you for asking I've been working on figuring out new ways of approaching my own comedy writing so this was a fun exercise for me.