Creating chaos onscreen requires a lot more planning than it might seem. That’s the case in this sequence from “Saturday Night,” the latest film from Jason Reitman, which looks at how the first episode of the long-running NBC sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” came together.
In the scene, the “S.N.L.” cast members John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and Garrett Morris are rehearsing a sketch.
“At the beginning, you know, it’s going through the normal steps and trying to figure out camerawork,” Reitman says of the scene in his narration, and by the end, “it’s a total catastrophe.”
So how did Reitman go about building this out-of-control situation? For one, he put his background actors through a boot camp, where they learned how to do the jobs of the crew people they were portraying. And beyond that, he created detailed plans for the production team to follow.
“We had to choreograph this movie like a dance film,” Reitman said. “I’d have a giant whiteboard like a football coach. And I would have to write plays for all the extras and background actors and crew, just so everyone would know where to be.”
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