‘Live From UT Austin, it’s RTF Live!’

Wells agreed that the opportunity to hear from Downey was once-in-a-lifetime.

"We weren't sure he was actually going to come but then he sat there in our three-hour class and listened to all our pitches," Wells continued. "It was so insane and I don't know if I'd ever get that opportunity anywhere else. I just felt so much pride in our work after that."

Though the writing process took most of the semester, filming the sketches, the digital shorts and the commercial parodies took many hours and a few late nights.

"It's not often that you get to do all these steps in one class," Rigo said. "Most classes have one step, so maybe you work on production in one, or you work on pre or post-production in another, or maybe you make one film and that's the entire thing. But to write so much and then oversee the making of the sketches and to have the two classes come together to do that, it's double the collaboration, and it's twice as cool!"

McCreery says that the show, or the class, would not have worked without the help of Schneider and his students.

"I don't think this collaboration would have been as successful without David's guidance and his student's dedication to the project," McCreery said. "David is a huge fan of 'SNL' and he, and his students, were so enthusiastic right from the start."

Together, the classes made sets come to life, constructing some from scratch and using others that are already complete, like the "Reporting Texas TV " news desk for "Midweek Update." They even had their own in-studio audience.

"I went in and met with the production class at the very beginning of the semester," McCreery said. "David and I tried to make it clear to everyone in both classes that their work doesn't have to be perfect and that there are no bad ideas. This is all about having fun, learning and finishing the final project."