Back to the 70s.
In the far corner, we can see the elevator shaft featured in the film, right next to the stage where Billy Preston and his band perform. Large-scale lighting grids were used to form the roof of the two-story studio that was built. The vintage lights, called Mole-Richardson, are no longer in use because they are not LED, and have to be ordered from across the country.
Jess Gonchor/Sony
The clock ticks
In the film, Lorne Michaels (played by Gabrielle LaBelle) had the idea to use real bricks on stage, laid with real concrete, to give the set a classic New York street corner feel. One catch: He makes this decision 90 minutes before the show goes live. It becomes a storytelling device: as the bricks increase, the air time decreases. The brick episode (which may or may not have happened) also highlights the cast’s bonding: when it becomes clear that the bricks won’t be laid in time, all the stars help out. “It encouraged everyone to get on the same page,” says Gonchor.
Jess Gonchor/Sony
“It’s ancient, but wonderful.”
In the main image, we can see a close-up of the red Moll-Richardson light described by Gonchor. There is a camera and a camera crane. Fun fact: There are only two of these Chapman cranes, produced between 1953 and 1954, that exist today, and the team still has one of those two available in the U.S. The technology is so analog, the cranes are balanced. A lead weight is required to do this. . “They’re so old, you really only use them now for movies like this. But they still work!” Gonchor says. For the camera on it, they rebuilt the housing to “throw back in time.” In it, Ella Hunt (who plays Gilda Radner in the film) rides an ancient crane.
Recreating the magic
Another interesting fact: the designers of the 1975 set borrowed their seats from Yankee Stadium, which was being renovated at the time. Gonchor secured similar seats for this iteration. And “underneath the scaffolding, we created a world: you had a prop department, a quick-change department, a paint department, a sound department.” The basic set that has become synonymous, and the image below shows the set from the famous opening “Wolverines” sketch.
Jess Gonchor/Sony
A bird’s eye view
Gonchor started with an architectural blueprint of the stage before he and his son, a model maker at work, created a white cardboard cutout model for scale. The model was created on a 3D program and printed with a 3D printer and took about three weeks to build. The complete set was taped to the soundstage before construction began. It took 12 weeks to get the idea from concept to actual construction – a “rapid” build.
Jess Gonchor/Sony
Credit : www.hollywoodreporter.com
