Frozen: The Making of a Disney Animated Classic Finale

Frozen: The Making of a Disney Animated Classic Finale

FrozenMania!

Frozen has become one of the most acclaimed movies in history. Let it go itself has been covered in over 25 different languages, and the production team feels so proud about the fact that many Frozen inspired videos have gone viral in Youtube. There is even a video of US Marines cheering extremely for Elsa in the Let It Go scene, but when I say cheering, I mean, screaming and shouting. The success of Frozen has gone to such a point that the film won 2 Oscars, which is a big deal, one for Let It Go (Best Original Song) and another for Best Animated Film.

Thanks to the success of Frozen, Disney has revealed that soon, there will be a new short called “Frozen Fever” that will be released right before the premiere for Cinderella (The new live action movie). In February 3^rd, Disney released, some stills for the new short. Producers exclusively revealed that it’s Anna’s Birthday and sadly Elsa has a Cold. These are the released photos:

As seen above the short seems to be extremely different, and I think this will make a very good addition to the Frozen and Disney Franchise. Now that you kind of know how Frozen was made, I think and hope this brought a bit of interest to you. Frozen will not be the only movie I’ll be making specials about, there are a few scheduled for the future. So stay tuned for the next movie review, and SPECIAL TRIVIA.

Frozen: The Making of a Disney Animated Classic Part 4

Frozen: The Making of a Disney Animated Classic Part 4

Elsa’s Ice Palace

As the design team worked on creating Arendele, they also had a very important task to accomplish, to build Elsa’s Ice Palace. A part of the design team started working on some sketches for Elsa’s Ice Palace; they gave the castle a really detailed appearance and each had a different upbringing, but Chris Buck (Frozen Director) had the idea of having the palace being created out of a snowflake, and from that snowflake, everything would come out and become a magical spectacle. In one shot for the creation of the palace, there were actually 45 things happening in that single shot, curls appeared from one curl and that curl created another, and that kind of built the palace up, just like a puzzle. It took nine months, for the Let It Go scene to be born, and at the end it turned out to be success.

The Story Of “Let It Go”

The story actually begins with Elsa’s upbringing. At first the only problem in the making of the film, was Elsa. What was she going to be? What was her role on the story? Well at first, as I mentioned before, she was brought up as an Evil Blue Queen with coat made of live weasels. When the musical writers, Robert Lopez & Kristen Lopez, started to compose songs for the film, they were writing a villain song for Elsa and so they started to get into the head space of what a person would feel like if they were that isolated, and so they knew that at that moment she would go through a transformation, from repressed, to letting her powers go. Once they started to write about the reality of being isolated, they knew they had something to say, to express. Robert Lopez said that the song, basically wrote itself, and later on, they sent the demo out for approval. People loved it so much, they had to rewrite the whole movie.

Once the song was written, they knew what Elsa was going to be, how she was going to be portrayed. When you see, the song in the film, the only thing you can see beyond the animation, is the message of liberation, freedom, and acceptance.

The Making Of Frozen Part 3

Frozen: The Making of a Disney Animated Classic Part 3

The Story of “Do You Want To Build a Snowman?”

Did you know that “Do You Want To Build a Snowman?” almost didn't make the final cut? Peter Del Vecho (Frozen Producer) said that there was a screening as late as February 2013, not that far from release, once they went through the film, they could see that the individual parts for that scene were strong, but it just didn't add up, and so the song had been taken out. Robert Lopez and his wife (Musical Writers) said that they sneaked it in again, but it was out, in, out, in and then it was kind of a groundswell in Disney, where the ranking file people wrote emails saying “Why is it out? Put it back in.” it wasn't put back in the film until the witching hour they released it. Thankfully they did because I think it’s one of the best songs in the movie. This song give the movie some sentiment and seriousness that makes it a masterpiece, its magnificent.

The Creation of Arendele

While the animators were creating the characters, the design team needed to create Arendele, and for this matter the design team went on a trip to Norway. They found what they were looking for. One of the design team members said that putting Arendele in the bottom of towering fiords gave the film an essence of uniqueness. Chris Buck told the crew “open your ears, open your mind, and open your heart, because you never know what you’re going to find.”

One of the most important things the design team noticed was a Norwegian pattern called Rosemaling. Rosemaling can be found anywhere in Norway, in columns, ceilings and even dresses; this was used in the film’s castle, characters, and Elsa’s Magic. The snow was also considered a sort of character in the film, for the sole reason that this was the first film to have characters actually interact with the snow. So for the crew to understand the snow’s movements and it’s interaction with people, they took a 3 day trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to play with snow.  People were impressed on how the snow gave the film character and originality.

Next Blog:  Queen Elsa’s Castle & The Story of “Let It Go”.

Frozen: The Making Of Part 2

Frozen: The Making of a Disney Animated Classic Part 2

The Creation of Queen Elsa

Chris Buck, one of the directors for Frozen, said that he admired how Idina Menzel gave Elsa, the essence of vulnerability, Idina also commented how she really felt a relationship with this character because when she was a child she would have this great singing voice and she would hide it all the time, and just like Elsa, they both had this amazing talent that was hidden. Wayne Unten (Animator Supervisor for “Elsa”) said that when Idina came to the studio to meet the animators, he could perceive the resemblance between her and Elsa. But what Wayne was most surprised at was when Idina started singing, he said that all that vulnerability, instantly vanished, he could also see the power flow out of her.

Here`s something people rarely know. Did you know that in early sketches for Frozen, Anna and Elsa weren’t even related?  Anna was a peasant that journeyed to ask the ice queen, Elsa to freeze her broken heart. At the end it wasn’t a good idea and so it was discarded obviously. In early sketches, Elsa was supposed to be this blue evil queen, with an armada of snowmen, but something changed that, something groundbreaking.

The actresses also commented on how they felt a relationship between them and their characters, because they also had siblings and also experienced most of the things Anna and Elsa went through. Kristen Bell commented how when she was a child she felt just like Anna, a little sister just wanting their big sister’s approval; and that eager to please, little sister feeling lead to what would ultimately become one of the film’s most beloved moments.

Do You Want To Build a Snowman?

Next Blog: The Story of “Do You Want To Build a Snowman?” & The Creation Of Arendele

The Making Of FROZEN Part 1

Frozen: The Making of a Disney Animated Classic Part 1

I’ve decided to split this blog post into several parts for the sole reason of entertainment; for you not to get bored reading a 10 paragraph blog post and having a great time reading this.

Frozen is a wonderful movie and when you know how the movie was made, it makes it even better. For the making of Frozen, there were about 600 crew members that worked for 2 years to make this spectacle of a film. As surprising as it may sound; did you know that Frozen almost didn’t get made? It took about 70 years to put this movie into production. Walt Disney had the dream of creating this movie as long ago as 1937, but sadly it just didn’t fit in, because eventually the sincere Princess movies just went out of style, and also because people felt that the world grew too cynical for a sincere fairytale and so they said “we are not making another one.” And so for the sole purpose to change that decision they decided to bring back hand drawn animation, with The Princess and The Frog and after to kind of introduce the 3D Disney movie animation they made Tangled and eventually came back to The Snow Queen, but with a different name.

The Creation of Princess Anna

Becky Bresee the Animation Supervisor for “Anna”, said that she really loved how Kristen Bell brought this goofy and fun personality to character in the such a way that people can really relate to it, because she has her faults just like everybody does and so that makes the character come to life and really make her more believable. Kristen bell also commented that she wanted Anna to be goofy and easy because that’s how she felt growing up. She also said that she embraced that fact that Anna is not a so standard princess personality, she wanted Anna to be different, to be a role model to young girls. Becky Bresee also said that she liked how Anna is real girl, a girl that wakes up with messy hair and imperfect, and the way that she actually makes the characters come to life is that, she shoots a small video of herself being the character and just imagining what the character would do in that particular scene, and after she takes that as inspiration and uses it in the creation process. 

Frozen SPECIAL TRIVIA

                                                               SPECIAL TRIVIA

Frozen has a very particular behind the scenes because, a lot happened that most people don’t know, and it’s exciting to know them, and so here are some of them:

• Queen Elsa at first was intended to be the villain.
• Princess Anna is 18 years old in the film, and both Elsa and Kristoff are 21 years old and Prince Hans is 23 years old.
  
  
•  Elsa being 21 years old makes her the oldest Disney Princess in the official line up.
• The characters of Hans, Kristoff, Anna and Sven are all named after Hans Christian Andersen, the original writer of The Snow Queen from which Frozen is based on. Say the names quickly in sequence and hear the similarity.
• When Queen Elsa joins the official Disney Princess Lineup she will be the only one in the lineup who is not a teenager.
• There is a hidden Mickey Mouse plush in one of the shelves in Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post and Sauna.
• Elsa’s castle needed over 50 animators to create.
• In early designs, the giant snowman that is later know as “Marshmallow” was originally going to be a giant version of Olaf, but it was later decided to not go through with the ideas because it would look “dumb”.
• A live reindeer was brought to the studios so animators could study its movements, for the sole creation of Sven the Reindeer.
• Both Kirsten Bell (Anna) and Idina Menzel (Elsa) auditioned for the role of Rapunzel in the 2010 animated film Tangled.

This is just a tad of Frozen backstage features for this post later on I will publish some other features I’ve found.

Frozen Review

                                Review                                                                                                                                  

I can easily describe this movie with one word “PHENOMENAL!” I think this is one of the best movies ever made this century, I mean, it’s so inspiring and its really heartwarming. What surprises me is that I did not write a review for this movie yet; I was literally like “what? Did it slip my mind or something?” and so now I will have a whole frozen blog marathon, expect everything, all things FROZEN, a thing I will say is that I will have a blog special about the making of Frozen, so expect that.

Frozen is one of the best movies ever made by Disney, and something I will say is that this movie is so different than the other Disney princess movies, the first time you see it you think you know what’s going to happen and how it’s going to end, but news flash you won’t even expect how the ending turns out. It’s really ingenious  and I love the way this movie sets such a statement about love, that in movies there is so much more than just Love between a couple, but Family love too.

The characters in this movie are Anna, Elsa which later becomes Queen Elsa, Olaf, Sven, Hans and Kristoff. My favorite character would be Elsa, because she is so strong yet so vulnerable and that is really appealing to me, and she also wears a blue dress, and I like blue so that’s also an add-on. I really recommend this movie and if you’ve seen it already, keep watching it.