slate.com/culture: It’s rare for the musical guests on Saturday Night Live to involve much in the way of special effects: the show is live, the timetable is tight, and the budget for lavish musical numbers is earmarked for John Mulaney singing about bodega bathrooms. But for this year’s season premiere, Billie Eilish went all out, performing “Bad Guy” while recreating one of Fred Astaire’s most famous effects.
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I first saw this video on Instagram, and I scrolled through the comments reading everyone's explanations of how this was done. I really didn't know the exact logistics, so it was helpful to see a ton of her fans explain it. This article doesn't really explain the technicalities of the set and how this was shot, and instead it offered a comparison between Billie's SNL performance and pieces that have done this before. I have always admired Billie's daring performances, loud outfits, and unfiltered lyrics, and if anyone were to want to pull this off on a low time and budget live television show, it would be her. Whenever I watch SNL, I always find myself wanting to fast-forward through the musical guests because few people try to enhance the SNL set in an exciting way. Saying that Billie enhanced the set would be an understatement. The fact that she danced around in a small rotating set in a boot while under strobe lights is a daring feat, and she did it in front of a studio audience and millions watching from home. I think this is genius and it was so fun to watch.
I saw this episode of SNL last week and was totally blown away by her number! I had never seen this effect done before, but I am glad to see the history of it with Fred Astaire and Lionel Richie doing the same thing in different forms. It is such a cool film trick that could never be done on stage. It has such a strong effect on the people watching it. Doing it on live TV is a pretty big undertaking, but nothing SNL hasn’t tried before. My favorite part about seeing it live was that you could see the people who were operating it. They had several stage hands rolling the whole room around by hand rather than employing nay kind of automation, which makes perfect sense for SNL due to their tight time constraints. Why bother trying to get automation and winches to work perfectly when ten people are easier to dial in and control with way less margin for error. I love seeing classical solutions to high tech problems. It is like the opposite of the “modern problems require modern solutions” idea.
I love everything about the trick she employed for her performance. The first time I saw this trick was not in Royal Wedding, but rather in Inception. And it wasn’t an elegant dance from floor to wall to ceiling and back, oh no, it was the 100-foot hallway fight scene. I was absolutely captivated by the fine choreography of the fight and the effortless transitions from, again, floor to wall to ceiling and back again. I eagerly watched behind the scenes footage of the full-scale 100-foot hallway suspended in the middle of seven giant I-beam rings. As soon as Eilish’s performance began, the static, centered camera angle instantly gave away the trick to me. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable to watch, and it reminded me of the classic Inception hallway fight. It was also an interesting choice on SNL’s part, considering the fact that SNL has a live audience, so the entire audience would know what is going on while they watch the performance. In addition, as they showed toward the end of the number, this was no small set. It was a bold idea with fairly good execution.
I remember seeing this visual “trick” for the first time. I was probably eight, sat in front of the television at my grandparents’ house way past a reasonable hour, watching “Royal Wedding” on the Turner Classic Movies channel. I was absolutely entranced. I didn’t know how it was done and I didn’t really care … it was cool! While I do think that Billie Eilish’s performance on SNL isn’t as gracefully executed, I think it is understandable. The scale of the set, the movability of the camera, the framing of the camera itself are all totally valid restrictions. Especially given that Fred Astaire was a 52 year old man with over 45 years of experience, as well as the fact that he had a larger, more versatile set and a more mobile camera. There has also been nearly 70 years worth of technological advancements made since “Royal Wedding” was filmed. To an audience in 1951 and to an eight year old, these types of “tricks” certainly illicit more of a “wow factor” than those same tricks repurposed in current times.
When I read this article, I wasn't reminded of Royal Wedding (I haven't seen it) or Lionel Richie's MTV days. No I remember the scene in High School Musical 3, where Troy Bolton is screaming in the hallway. I remember being entranced by the scene. However, that scene used more CGI then Billie Eilish as she did it on live television. Also, the camera in HSM3 also turned, giving a different allusion that is not as impressive as SNL's. I want so badly to know how they did this on live TV!! This article is great in comparing it to Richie's MTV video and Astaire's movie, but talks nothing about the technical aspects of how to actual pull this stunt off. I am not a huge fan of Billie Eilish but I think the effect she did on SNL is amazing and very gutsy to do on live TV. SNL pulled it off well and made the musical guest much more enjoyable to watch.
I'm actually so confused. How was that done? I understand how it works in other situations that can have editing and fancier cameras, but SNL is literally live. I doubt they made 4 different sets just so the ground can be different on each one. Was it spinning? Am I going crazy? Ok I think I get it, that she was definitely in a spinning box. Because that explains why she held the wall with her leg while it would've been spinning, and why the set was so small. I think it's pretty badass of SNL to do that, especially since it is such a. huge technological undertaking for just a guest singer. This video reminds me of watching all these types of shows when I was younger and being so mesmerized by the effect. It's sad that now it's so much easier to process how they actually did it, taking away from the magic. Either way, I literally have never wanted to work for SNL more than I currently do because this was really cool and SNL in general is so cool.
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