Oz Rodriguez

Film, Class of 2003

LAFS Alumni Oz Rodriguez

Emmy-winning director Oz Rodriguez has written and directed video shorts since he got his start at Funny or Die. As a creative force in the sketch comedy world, Oz worked his way up to segment director and producer at SNL and has been with the show for nearly a decade. Oz turned his knowledge of SNL into a popular behind-the-scenes nonfiction series called Creating Saturday Night Live.

“My directing style is trying to conduct this orchestra to do their best performance. I want to empower people to do their best. I like to have a lot of collaboration and discussion about what the end goal is.”

Over the years, Oz has worked on more than 50 episodes of SNL and directed the Emmy®-winning show Creating Saturday Night Live, which documents the making of America’s most iconic sketch comedy TV series. Rodriguez’s work has earned multiple major industry honors. He won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2019 for Creating Saturday Night Live in the category of Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series. He was also nominated for Primetime Emmys in 2017 and 2018 for his work on the same series, recognized in both the Short Form Nonfiction and Short Form Variety categories. In 2025, he was nominated for a Gotham TV Award for Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, in the category of Outstanding Original Film, Broadcast, or Streaming. Earlier in his career, Rodriguez received an ALMA Award nomination in 2011 for Outstanding Director of a Television Series for his work on Funny or Die Presents.

Read more on Oz’s IMDB Page.

Latest news featuring Oz Rodriguez:

Josh Gitersonke

Winners of Creative Arts Emmys Announced!

Congratulations to Oz Rodriguez and Joshua Gitersonke on their Emmy Wins! Round one of the Creative Arts Emmys took place on Saturday, September 14, and two alumni from The Los Angeles Film School went home with the gold statue. The preliminary…
Emmy Nominations

LAFS at the 2019 Emmys

Congratulations to the 37 alumni who worked on 31 Emmy-nominated Productions for 2019 We are proud to recognize the talented alumni who worked on Emmy-nominated productions for the 71st Annual Primetime Emmys. The Academy has roughly 24,000…