How WandaVision Fan Art Played An Especially Important Role For The Crew - Exclusive
Now that WandaVision has wrapped up its limited run, visual effects supervisor Tara DeMarco can finally bask in the success of the Marvel Studios' debut series on Disney+ as its MCU counterpart, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, takes flight.
Thanks to its classic sitcom setting — a fantastical place that provides Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) the chance to live out the idyllic life with Vision (Paul Bettany) she never had — WandaVision doesn't exactly come out guns a-blazing in the visual effects department. Things do escalate in complexity, however, as the series unfolds over nine episodes. In an exclusive interview with Looper, DeMarco said that while she didn't get much of a chance to enjoy the overwhelmingly positive fan reaction to WandaVision, there were particular things from the series' admirers that caught her eye.
"It's interesting. I have been working on the series during, or at least most of the series. I don't have a ton of time to pay attention to reactions. I do get to see some, but what I've found really impactful is actually fan art, because it ends up creeping around in different people on our little visual effects team will share it," DeMarco told Looper. "It's incredible to me, that within a day, if a scene was impactful, then there's art that people spend their own time recreating and immortalizing in other ways — I love it."
Tara DeMarco says the Scarlet Witch comics also inspired her during production
DeMarco said that while her visual effects team didn't have anything to do with the creation of any hidden Easter eggs on WandaVision for fans to seek out, they made certain that the inspiration for all things in the MCU — the Marvel Comics — were well represented in the series.
"There are things that we deliberately tip hat to the comic book that they're not so much Easter Eggs as [they are] a visual homage," DeMarco told Looper. "We purposefully included House of M pieces when Vision comes apart and the kids come apart, and we had the comic [on set]. I mean, I would hold it up to the camera and talk to the artists. We would definitely reference specific comic imagery regularly. And that isn't so much hidden as intentional."
DeMarco said while it's on her and her fellow artists' minds to help create live-action stories that live up to the expectations of the fans of the comic books that feature Wanda and Vision, they are not so much fearful of meeting those expectations as they are inspired by the challenge it brings to them to do their best work.
"I don't think it adds any extra pressure. It's more like it adds inspiration, to make sure that we are doing our very best with as many iterations as we can get, or creative changes, just to make sure that we're executing imagery that the fans will appreciate," DeMarco said. "So, it's more like something to strive for than something to be afraid of."
All nine episodes of WandaVision are streaming now on Disney+.