Fall/Winter 2016-17

Tools: Don Roy King's Pencil

The DGA and Emmy award winner has directed more than 200 episodes of Saturday Night Live, and counting.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

"My favorite on-set tool—my only on-set tool—is a yellow number 2 pencil with a healthy eraser. The SNL scripts change so frequently and so completely that I spend most of our prep days remarking my camera blocking and production cues. My predecessor, Beth McCarthy-Miller, used a mechanical pencil and a large, separate gummy eraser. I tried, but never developed her digital dexterity: pencil drop, eraser pickup, eraser action, eraser drop, pencil pickup. I was stuck in my old school routine: pencil-flip, eraser scrub, re-flip, rewrite. Well, it works for me and has inadvertently led to my SNL legacy: Because of Don Roy King, there is, for the first time ever, a pencil sharpener (electric!) in the 8H control room."