What If...? Editors on Marvel's First Animated Series, Working With Family, and More

Working With Family

ComicBook.com: As I understand it, you two are brothers, right?

Graham Fisher: We came from a clone factory, actually. Yeah, yeah. No, but we're actually twin brothers and we don't always work together but when we do it's a blast.

I mean, it's no secret Marvel dominates the box office. Marvel is peak Hollywood, right? What's it like working with family amongst one of the biggest jobs that you can possibly get in Tinsel Town?

Joel Fisher: Well, the word family, I think, is very apt because the studio overall has a very family-like atmosphere. Everyone is very, very warm and thoughtful and kind and that's one of the most amazing things I think for me is, it feels like a small family business, as opposed to, as you described it, one of the biggest studios in the world and it is. It's just a beautiful place to work, everybody's thoughtful and kind, like I just said. What do you think, Graham?

GF: Yeah, I think that it really is a tone that is set from the very top with Kevin [Feige], Victoria [Alonso], and Lou [D'Esposito]. The first time Kevin stepped into the editing bay, he looked around and realized he didn't know everybody yet. And he went around and made a point of shaking all our hands, getting to know our names, and saying how excited he was to be getting into animation. So I think that it's an environment that is created from the top that makes it possible for filmmakers to bring their best work. I think that the level of work that Marvel Studios puts out in the world, the reason that it's very consistent is because of the leadership at the studio, which is high-quality human beings.

Trailblazers

Graham, you mentioned environment, which is good. What If...? is Marvel's first animated property and one of the first television shows Marvel Studios has put together. Everyone knows about the Marvel machine, the Marvel environment. Do you feel since this was the first animated show, you got a little extra leeway or freedom to do what you wanted? Did you still have a crib sheet you had to adhere to or how was the production process for your first go-around with Marvel?

GF: Yeah, I mean, the production process has been from the very beginning, I think everybody on the crew was thrilled to be blazing a trail at Marvel Studios to try the animation medium. And it's such a natural fit for Marvel to be getting into animation. And we knew as we were going, that we needed to do right by the fans and we needed to do right by everybody that came in after us to try and create this wonderful momentum to keep telling more and more stories through the animation medium.

JF: As far as more leeway, I mean, I don't think there is ... It was like Kevin would actually exit screenings saying like, "That was amazing." He's like, "I have no idea how our vendor will pull that off. Never seen anything like that but keep pushing it." And so that was basically our marching orders. Was like anything that we could all imagine together, within limits obviously but they were mostly ... It was basically just whatever you guys can imagine and come up with, which was amazing the amount of freedom we had.

Seeing Double

That's awesome. Once these episodes premiere, obviously these fans are going to pour over them and watch them time and time again. But outside of the fans that watch it a million times, you would think the editors are up there with the people who've seen it the most. Joel, how many times do you think you've seen the episodes you've edited?

JF: 10,000. We sculpt it and work on it for months in the animatic stage. And then, we watch it every shot, many, many, many times over the months of the various stages as the shots are actually created. So yeah, I can't even imagine how many times I've watched each of these.

Workload

No, that's great. Are you both editing every episode? Do you flip flop? How do you handle the workload?

GF: Yeah. We handle the workload by mostly leapfrogging. So we would take every other episode and then there's going to be a couple of episodes further into the show that we actually collaborated on as more episodes stacked up and quarantine hit.

JF: Became necessary towards the end.

Right. How many episodes did you have done by the time lockdowns came into effect?

JF: Quite a few in the animatic stage. Yeah, most of the episodes were locked in the animatic stage and were hitting various stages of production. And there was a handful at the very end that we got to pilot, you know, remote tools locking them, which was amazing how well they worked. That's an exciting shift for the industry, as well.

Editing Down to the Wire

I think [Loki director] Kate Herron said she was working on the episodes and locking them in until like two or three weeks before they premiered on Disney+. Is that a similar timeline to What If...? Is Season One already in the can or are you still working on the final episodes?

GF: Yeah. We just handed it in a couple of the last episodes, so it really is very, very down to the wire. Yeah, there's a whole world of people right now, translating things and doing a lot of other things on the episodes to keep the distribution pipeline going. But yeah, we've worked on these, up to the last minute.

Season Two

In not too typical of the Marvel fashion, Kevin, AC Bradley, and Brad have talked about Season Two. Are you guys on board with Season Two so far? Have you started working on that? I know AC started writing it a year and a half ago. So are you guys on board with that?

JF: Yep, yep. Yeah and speaking of Ashley, she's awesome. We love working with her.

This wasn't the first project you guys worked with her, right? I thought I saw something else, right?

JF: Yeah. Our days go back to Dreamworks together, yeah. We used to work together there and she actually was the one who brought us over to Marvel.

Dream Projects

Final question. I'm not sure if you can see behind me, you have seen my Gargoyles action figures. You see my Final Space action figures. Obviously, you guys are working in animation. It doesn't get much bigger than Marvel Studios but do you have one nostalgic property you dream of rebooting? What type of show do you just need to get your hands on?

GF: Personally, it's not about that necessarily. It's about telling rich stories in animation. I feel animation deserves to tell stories that are for everyone, that I think ... I love being on this show in particular because we get to push the limits of genre and filmmaking and what expectations can be for animated TV.

JF: Yeah.

GF: And Marvel's been a hundred percent there. They've really wanted to push it hard and to cannonball into that and the pool of animation.

JF: Well, that's one of the amazing things, too, with genre medium and also with animation in particular because you can do pretty much anything you can imagine and put it up on screen, is you can pursue the human in every story. But also people are willing to sit down and see that story unfold because of all those cool trappings, you know? So like for example, this week's episode, it's just rich with metaphor of what happens to our worlds when we lose love. Our world collapses and the way that it does that and it's through the visuals and through everything that happens and unfolds page by page. It's really exciting to be able to tell stories in that way with this medium, you know?

*****

The first four episodes of Marvel's What If...? are now streaming on Disney+.

What What If... storylines do you hope to see in the series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!

If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here. Note: If you purchase one of the awesome, independently chosen products featured here, we may earn a small commission from the retailer. Thank you for your support.