'Saturday Night Live' VFX Featurette Reveals Impressive Work Done On A Tight Schedule

When it comes to examining a show like Saturday Night Live, it's easy to only pay attention to the comedy and performances. After all, people watch the staple late night sketch series for laughs. But because the show is live where anything can happen, that makes the technical achievements behind the scenes even more impressive.

We've already talked about countless times how impressive it is that SNL even comes together at all when the entire episode is put together in a single week. But many still don't realize just how much of a miracle it is, especially when it comes to the quick turnaround of things like building sets, or even more impressive, creating visual effects.

Watch the Saturday Night Live VFX featurette after the jump.

Saturday Night Live doesn't require the level of visual effects that blockbuster movies have to deal with, but occasionally, there are sketches that require visual effects to be completed in post-production, or even visual effects that need to be created for use during a live sketch. The fact that there's a team creating this work in such a small window is incredible.

Most post-production facilities have ample time to create elements such as a forked tongue emerging from Margot Robbie's throat or the background of Starkiller Base, but the visual effects crew at SNL often has less than a week to create these effects and make them convincing enough for the show. As the video says, sometimes they even have less than 12 hours to complete the job. They may not be visual effects that would hold up in a major studio movie, but for being done in an insanely short amount of time, they're undeniably impressive.

We'll be back with another Saturday Night Live review this weekend after Chris Pine makes his hosting debut on May 6.