SNL Digital Short

The opening title that appears before most shorts.

An SNL Digital Short is one in a series of comedic and often musical video shorts created for NBC's Saturday Night Live. The origin of the Digital Short brand is credited to staff writer Adam McKay,[1] who created content for the show in collaboration with SNL hosts, writers, and cast members. The popularity of these segments exploded following the addition of The Lonely Island (Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer, and Andy Samberg) to the show, and it is to them that credit is given for ushering SNL "into the age of digital online content in a time when it needed to tap into that relevance more than ever."[2] The Lonely Island's digital shorts were originally recorded with consumer grade digital video cameras and edited on personal computers.[3] It is typical for the show's hosts and musical guests to take part in that week's Digital Short (the latter on rarer occasions), and several shorts have included appearances by celebrities who were not scheduled to appear in any of that episode's live sketches.

The shorts generally took fewer than five days to complete.[4] Schaffer directed a majority of them, with Taccone as occasional director or co-director. Taccone also produced music for the shorts as necessary, along with his brother, Asa.

Following Samberg's departure from SNL in 2012, it was speculated that the era of videos branded "An SNL Digital Short" had come to an end.[5] A total of eight new Digital Shorts from The Lonely Island have aired since then: two that featured the episode's respective hosts (Adam Levine in Season 38[6] and Natalie Portman in Season 43); two that aired when Samberg hosted the Season 39 finale in 2014; one created for the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special in February 2015 (featuring Samberg & Adam Sandler); one that aired during the Season 41 finale in May 2016 to promote The Lonely Island's feature film, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping; and two that aired in Season 50.

  1. ^ Adams, Erik (November 16, 2012). "Why it's still important to take the 'live' out of Saturday Night Live". The A.V. Club. The Digital Shorts brand wasn't even born with 'Lazy Sunday' — it was previously applied to the likes of 'The H Is O', Adam McKay's 'Ben Stiller can get Glenn Frey into bed in three lines or less' short from 2000.
  2. ^ Parton, Brad Becker (January 23, 2014). "The Evolution of SNL's Pretaped Sketches and Digital Shorts". Vulture.
  3. ^ Itzkoff, Dave (December 27, 2005). "Nerds in the Hood, Stars on the Web". New York Times.
  4. ^ "Andy Samberg Profile". AskMen.com. Archived from the original on 2011-01-05. Retrieved 2010-02-13.
  5. ^ Ryan, Mike (17 May 2012). "'Saturday Night Live': Looking Back At The Digital Short Era". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
  6. ^ McGlynn, Katla (January 27, 2013). "WATCH: The Lonely Island Returns To 'SNL'". Huffington Post.