The last film in Phase Four of Marvel Studios’ MCU, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a powerhouse. Not only does it delve into mourning and loss as Shuri (Letitia Wright) and the people of Wakanda deal with the loss of King T’Challa all while dealing with new threats — both from the world at large and Namor (Tenoch Huerta), leader of the previously unknown undersea kingdom of Talokan, but the film is also a visual spectacle as well. The visual aspect of the film is, in no small measure, thanks to the work of the VFX team who helped to bring to life some of the iconic locations, scenes, and moments in the film.
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ComicBook.com recently spoke with Anedra Edwards, who worked as a VFX editor on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to talk about the making of the film, how working on Wakanda Forever was different from another MCU project she was part of, WandaVision, and the collaborative effort to bring Talokan to life.
Nicole Drum, ComicBook.com: I just have to say first congratulations on the success of Wakanda Forever. It is such a good film. Obviously, a film like this is very significant in a number of ways because of just everything the film means both in real life and also in the MCU. For you, what made you want to be a part of this. When did your journey with this film begin?
Anedra Edwards: Well, what made me want to be a part of this film was definitely being a fan of it prior. In the first Black Panther, I was just a fan when I saw it. I wasn’t working with Marvel at the time or didn’t have any affiliations with any of the departments yet. It was really fun just as a fan to see the storytelling and the uniqueness of the story. Being able to look at the African diaspora in a superhero space was just really fun. And I was already working in a superhero realm being on the DC Comics end. I was already a visual effects editor for the show Black Lightning when Black Panther came out. And so, we knew that the storytelling that Black Panther provided, everyone was going to benefit from it. That it was just going to elevate the different types of stories that could be told, especially if you were already in a superhero show at the time.
Having had that experience and then I knew some… Some of my colleagues, there were a couple who worked on the first film that we got close with while they were there. Eventually, they sent my name over to the team that would eventually become my team. They sent my name over to Wakanda Forever. By the time they were actually sending my name over to that team, I was already now in the Marvel Cinematic universe. I’ve come into WandaVision as a visual effects editor during 2020. Of course. With everything that happened in 2020 from a pandemic standpoint. So, coming into Wakanda Forever, they knew that if I survived the chaos of getting a show out the door in the pandemic, I could be a great asset with all that Wakanda Forever could be. So, it was really great to come into it. That’s how I got kind of introduced to the team. I interviewed in December 2020. My first day in the office was June 2021.
That’s a good span of time.
Yeah. Most people are like, “Wow, you’ve known about it for that long and then had to wait?” And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s kind of the deal.” I ended up starting. My first day in the office in June was actually in Atlanta. When I went down for filming. I was down in Atlanta for five months and then returned back to Los Angeles, which is my home base, for the rest of the post production schedule. So that was my whole introduction and journey.
You mentioned WandaVision, which I have to say might be my absolute favorite MCU thing. There are some cool visuals in that show. The story is also great. WandaVision and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever both do that on so many levels. How was working on Wakanda Forever different than WandaVision? Other than the pandemic piece of it because we know that obviously plays a huge role. But these are two very different types of… They look and feel different, you know?
Well, WandaVision, because it was an episodic series, operates in a different space. You may be telling a similar story of grief, but how you’re telling it is a bit different because it’s being pieced to your audience. And we did have a unique point of the story where we based it off of a similar format for TV comedies over the decades. We had episodes that were 30 minutes, that were really short, and then some episodes that are a bit longer. Working in it from visual effects, you have a little bit of a different mind because part of our series is going to start airing while we’re working on it.
I hadn’t thought about that.
Yeah. Versus Wakanda Forever, I work on it for this amount of time and then we let the world see one large thing. It’s a different kind of space in terms of how both the stories get told and how they’re put out there. From what I do as a visual effects editor, they both operate a bit differently. There’s a lot more time on the feature film side. Especially with films of the size of a Wakanda Forever. They take a lot longer. For me, I was on the project a year and five months. That’s a pretty healthy chunk of time to work on visual effects for a production. Versus working on WandaVision, I came onto the team after they returned from filming in Atlanta. My time with them was about 10 months, maybe. So, the time that you work on some of the shots… Even though it’s still a Marvel pipeline. You’re still using the Marvel visual effects pipeline. And that was something that I was very much used to. But in terms of how the stories were told… One is kind of you build with your audience. To get them to certain emotional points week after week. Versus Wakanda Forever, it’s act after act. Or reel… Well, we use reel. It’s reel after reel. Into the two hours and 41 minutes. They’re both different emotional journeys that visual effects plays a part of.
It sounds like you also have to use your brain in a different way between those two different projects too. The way you have to think about them in a sense. Would that be accurate?
I think so. When I try to give feedback on visual effects, for each project, I try to take in the context of what’s happening in that scene and try to look for… Especially in sometimes the more subtle effects that you see. Try to make sure that we have continuity between them. And so, it’s good for you to know what is actually happening the entire length of the episode or the entire length of the scene so that you can work appropriately. You have to switch your brain in different ways because Wakanda Forever, I’m also keeping in context the entire length of the film. Versus in Wanda vision, I’m in the context of the 30-minute episode or longer. Keeping it within that and then our seasonal arc as well comes a bit behind. You’re turning your brain in different ways.
I think also a lot of times as fans, we see these impressive films and TV series that have all these really cool effects. They look beautiful and they tell beautiful stories both for the eyes and with the actual story itself. We don’t really understand the massive undertaking that is. Can you walk me through your experience with… Obviously, there’s a lot of teams that go into making a film like Wakanda Forever. What was it like working with the various moving parts of a film of that scale?
Like you said, it is. It’s a massive machine. In terms of how I’m working and whom I’m working with, we have very large… Visual effects are some of the largest teams on some of these films. As shown by our credits and the amount of people under there. So, in terms of working in that pipeline, I’m one of four visual effects editors. Two of us were down in Atlanta during filming and then the other two came on once we returned back to LA. And so, for me… And we also had our lead VFX editor. He did some of our principal photography that came after the Christmas holiday. The Christmas holiday of 2021 to 2022. Actually, to be more accurate, the beginning of 2022.
So, he was down there. And then it was me who was back in LA, but I was a person who had been in Atlanta and kind of knew the scenes from just having been down there. I knew some of the filming. Sometimes we reference scenes by where something was filmed. Some of our… For example, the mining mission basically at the beginning of the film where they go down into the ocean and you see our two scientists in their suits going down and they find vibranium at the bottom of the ocean. A lot of that was filmed in Brunswick, Georgia. And so, we refer to the scene as Brunswick. And so, I helped with pre-production of that scene because it was done while I was down in Georgia. So, when I came back to Los Angeles, I was kind of the eyes and ears of the footage that we had because I was down there and what we had from visual effects. And so that’s something that is largely a part of what I did having been on the filming side for the photography. And then also going through visual effects tracking, which is a job under visual effects editorial. We keep the continuity of what shots are where in the edit. That’s a large part of our job as well. Along with temp compositing, which is huge. I do compositing along in the film as the edit changes so that we keep filling in the gaps and you stay in the story as the edit is changing. We also get some help from from one of our visual effects houses, Digital Domain. They also did our post as well. So that’s a rough assessment of a few of the things that I do. But it is definitely a chunk of… It’s a chunk out of the schedule. VFX, we’re working at the same time that they’re filming. We are around and there the entire time.
That is so cool. You mentioned the underwater stuff. I have to be a little fan girl for a second because this movie brought to life probably my all-time favorite character, Namor. More than that, it also brought to life his underwater kingdom. And in a really cool way that brings in a whole different group of people and their history. I’m obsessed with what the film did for Talokan. What was the process of creating that world? The whole film is just rooted in real culture and real history even as it’s building a unique world. Every time I read something new about how they found references for things in terms of telling the story and costumes. How did you guys do the same thing only from a VFX standpoint? Because obviously you have to dig into it as well because you’re building these crazy beautiful worlds. Tell me a little bit about that.
Well, it’s definitely our director, Ryan Coogler, really driving the helm to make sure the themes that he wants to come through. But also, he’s a really great collaborator in terms of allowing each department to really take the helm with what they do. He would always say, “I trust you,” in terms of I know you know your job and I trust you for what you’re able to bring to the table. I think that’s really awesome to have that in a director. You want someone that trusts your ability and trusts that. And so, it’s really collaborative for Talokan to come to life. With our production designer, Hannah Beachler, Oscar winner who’s amazing.
Also, my visual effects supervisors, Jeffrey Bowman, Michael Ralla. My visual effects producer, Nicole Raleigh. It’s definitely a group effort and team effort to help bring Talokan to life. And the film itself. We had a number of experts who came on. Even to the point of what our hieroglyphics would look like underwater for Talokan. Because we’re taking from Mesoamerican culture and it still needs to be infused within visual effects, but also, we’re going into the depths of the ocean that we haven’t explored, really, as humans. From a real-life perspective. We don’t know what it looks like all the way down there. It’s really fun to see the collaborative ideas that we all came up with what it would look like. What sea life or creatures would look like. Oh! Riding on the back of the whales and what that would look like at that point. So, it was really fun to have Ryan’s themes of let’s make this look like if you really went down there. It would be that. It would be that dark or it would be that murky in places. And there are parts where it is. It’s dark and it’s a bit murky because, if you’re down there, you wouldn’t have super bright light as you would think. You’re going to have… Of course, we do make it illuminated in places. But it was really awesome to have Ryan’s direction on that.
And then for me, for visual effects as a visual effects editor, being responsible for the original plate photography that gets to our visual effects houses. Making some of the choices with that. Because we had to fill that environment. We have divers and swimmers. Extras. Our actors are swimming really in water. We did a lot of tank work with this film. So, I had a lot of footage coming through to make sure that we could really fill that environment with our wonderful and talented actors who were swimming there. And then when I did my temp compositing, even rotoring some of that out. We had one shot in particular that was really fun was working with Nakia. When she goes into the under… or she’s making her way to the underwater cave where Shuri and RiRi are kind of held during parts of the film. And rotoring her out and her real divers and the water work that she did. And so that was really fun for me so that it kept you in the story as we kept changing and changing in and out shots as well.
And so that’s a little bit above Talokan in terms of geography, but Talokan itself… It was really fun to do that. We actually had a mixture of wet for wet photography, which the actors… When they’re really in the water. And then we have dry for wet, which is when we have some of the actors above in a non-wet environment and we add them into water and we kind of fill the water… We fill the scene as a water scene. It definitely helped, of course, to be a VFX editor to composite that. To go be able to go in and out and also to communicate with Digital Domain, what’s in the edit and what’s not so that we can keep that life looking real while we continue on in the edit process.
Also, in terms of the world of visual effects, I know that it doesn’t always seem like there are a lot of women in this field. I know every time I talk to someone, it’s almost always a man. And on top of that, it’s almost always a white man. Here you are, working on Wakanda Forever, which is this gorgeous, rich, diverse story. And it’s a necessary story. I know for me as an audience member, it feels important to have Black women helping tell this story visually, story wise, and things like that. Can you talk to me a little bit about, for you as a woman in this industry that is extremely male dominated, what it was like for you to work on this film? Again, it’s meaningful in so many ways.
Yeah, no, I think… Being an African American woman in visual effects, there are times where… Well, there’s times where I don’t see myself in these rooms. There is no one at the table that looks like me. I may be the only woman or the only African American woman. The only Black person. The only person of color. That happens more often than not in my experiences. I think the industry is getting better about realizing where they can bring inclusivity. And by industry, I mean Hollywood specifically. Hollywood, big features, Hollywood, major studios. Seeing that visual effects editorial is a great way to continue to expand and bring the conversation of inclusivity to the table of not just hiring the same people to tell the same stories.
I think that’s really what it’s about. I always want to be known for being qualified for my position. Having the experience first and foremost at the door. I can do this because I’m qualified and experienced to do this. And being an African American woman is part of my overall experience and it’s a form of storytelling that I can bring to the table. And so, I encourage other people, no matter what your skin color or who you are, that you bring to the table this 110% of authenticity. That’s what makes you stand out. I would like that people will consider and understand that inclusivity has to be something that’s top of mind. It doesn’t always naturally and organically happen. I think in some ways, when there are scenarios where you do see the same type of people being hired, it’s because inclusivity wasn’t top of mind. All the time.
And so, I do value being a part of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever because I was a fan already and because I have experience being part of the African diaspora. What it’s like to be a Black woman in America is something that I experience. What it’s like to hear and understand the African mythology that we use. The influences that we have. The same that I would think that it’s echoed as well to those who live in the Yucatan and saw portions of their… To see a geographic area represented. Feeling like there’s representation that’s there. Being a part of that, knowing that I’m in… I’m behind a curtain. A lot of people don’t really see visual effects editors. They don’t really get to know what we do. Like you said, quite often it is a white male that is the forefront. But knowing that I’m back there and there’s other people like myself just as qualified to be in these positions and share the story. I hope that I continue to push the message of having women of color. We can be in the storytelling of women like Shuri, in showing that perspective, but I can also tell other stories as well. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Black Panther story that I can work on. It can be Thor. It can be all these other movies. WandaVision! It can be all of that. It can be all types of storytelling. I think that we bring value to the table.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is in theaters now.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
