SIU Alumnus Tim Wilkime is a new segment director for Saturday Night Live.

Wilkime graduated from SIU in 2009 with a degree in radio and television.

“At the time a lot of my friends were doing radio/television at SIU and it just seemed like the thing that spoke more to what I was trying to do,” Wilkime said. “I know they were teaching some editing courses and things that were like that and interested me.”

He was very involved in alt.news, an RSO focused on making mini-documentaries, fake commercials, short films and sketches.

“I think that’s what kind of made me realize that I really, really wanted to direct comedy going forward in some capacity,” Wilkime said. 

He wasn’t involved in anything else since alt.news took up most of his time.

“alt.news was kind of my whole life at SIU in, like, the best way possible,” Wilkime said. “I have, like so many friends that I, you know, that I met through that show that I’m still friends with. I met my wife through alt.news and so when I was doing that, there was really no time for anything else.”

While at SIU, something that jump started his sketch group at the time and got him connections was a parody of the 2008 Olympics Micheal Phelps win.

“Me and my sketch partner thought it’d be funny to, like, basically take real footage from the Olympics and intercut it with the guy that lost by .01 seconds,” Wilkime said. “So we went to the Rec Center and we just had a camera and we, just, my partner Scott got in the pool and we basically shot like the other side of like, the loser of that event.”

Wilkime said back in 2008 the video went viral, getting millions of views, and was his first big project while he was still a senior.

After graduating, Wilkime moved to Los Angeles and was fortunate enough to start work immediately. 

“I was directing me some things, you know, early on, but mainly I was, like, editing and doing motion graphics, or just, like, random jobs,” Wilkime said. “It was a lot of editing. I did a lot of editing and motion graphic jobs.”

Wilkime said he also still made personal sketches with his then-sketch comedy partner and was able to find more work through that. 

“[It] kind of spun off into doing some directing work for a brand, you know, for just like random brands at the time,” Wilkime said. “That’s spun off into. . . directing for College Humor and, you know, kind of like slowly went up from there.”

College Humor is a comedy company from Los Angeles that produces comedy sketches on YouTube. One of the videos Wilkime directed for them was “If Google was a guy,” which went viral, having 35 million views.

“That was, like, a really popular video that I feel, like, kind of was at the beginning of my time in College Humor,” Wilkime said. “I think people. . . kind of trusted me with doing more things because of the success of that video.”

Wilkime said directing is a job that can have many peaks in valleys in a career.

“[There are], these moments where like, you’re busy working and you’re, kind of, you feel like you’re on the right track,” Wilkime said. “Then. . . you can go like months without getting, like, a directing job and you kind of feel like you’re doing something wrong or, it’s not working out.”

Between being busy with big projects, he could go months that he’d have to fill with editing motion graphics and other jobs he could get during those times, Wilkime said. Much of working in television is to persist through the hard times.

“Just continuing to, like, make your own things outside of the things you’re getting paid for, because that’s ultimately how you know what people get excited for you for is the things that you’re putting out into the world,” Wilkime said. “Whether it’s short films, or, you know, spec commercials, you might make on the side or just, you know, scripts that you might be writing and that’s kind of how I feel like I’ve continued to move upwards in my career.”

Wilkime said making sure to do things on the side over the years is something that helps people stay connected with his work, want to work with him and recommend him in the future.

“A director I’d met 10 years ago. . . we were both College Humor directors. He was directing for Saturday Night Live [for] the last five seasons and when he left he recommended me to kind of fill in, to replace him,” Wilkime said. “The reason I ended up doing The Tonight Show last year was because of a writer I had worked with on The Late Late Show, years before that.”

Having good work relationships like these help a director not beat themselves up too much when they’re not working as much and still pursuing passion projects, Wilkime said. 

“I was fortunate that when I came out to L.A. there was a pretty big alumni network, just people within alt.news,” Wilkime said. “I was able to kind of get some work just from connections of people in alt.news like years, years older than me, like folks I didn’t even go to college with but had done alt.news.”

Wilkime’s connections helped him get to other places too, like working with Funny or Die, Above Average and Ashton Kutcher’s production company Katalyst Media, he said.

He’s made various short films including “Staycation,” about a couple having their honeymoon at home and “Milton,” about a man in the hospital with his family visiting him.

“That was kind of a, I guess, a film festival success, so that one went to South by Southwest and won the Vimeo staff pick award,” Wilkime said. “It went to Aspenshorts Fest and it won an audience award there.”

Some big names Wilkime has been able to work with include actors Will Smith, Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Miles Teller, Will Arnet and singer Megan Thee Stallion on SNL, and Jimmy Fallon and James Corden on their shows.

Something Wilkime has learned being a director and getting better at preparing for his work and projects in a way that makes him feel more passionate about the work he’s doing.

“I just feel more confident going into every project, every shoot day,” Wilkime said. “It is kind of taking advantage of tools that have always kind of been accessible, but just things that I’ve kind of, like, learned to implement into my workflow over the years.”

Wilkime said he recommends doing as many things outside of class work as you can to help better find your style. 

“In my case, a lot of things I made at SIU is kind of the reason I was able to kind of jump start my career in L.A.,” Wilkime said. “You can really use your time in school to, you know, hopefully, start to prepare yourself for outside of school.” 

Staff reporter Jamilah Lewis can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jamilahlewis. To stay up to date with all your southern Illinois news, follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter.

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