Sunday, 24 May 2015

Frozen

Frozen is a 2013 American 3D computer-animated musical fantasy–comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures.[4] It is the 53rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, the film tells the story of a fearless princess who sets off on an epic journey alongside a rugged iceman, his loyal pet reindeer, and a naïve snowman to find her estranged sister, whose icy powers have inadvertently trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.
Frozen underwent several story treatments for years before being commissioned in 2011, with a screenplay written by Jennifer Lee, and both Chris Buck and Lee serving as directors. It features the voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad andSantino Fontana. Christophe Beck, who had worked on Disney's award-winning short Paperman, was hired to compose the film's orchestral score, while husband-and-wife songwriting team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote the songs.
Frozen premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California, on November 19, 2013,[5] and went into general theatrical release on November 27. It was met with strongly positive reviews from critics and audiences, with some film critics consideringFrozen to be the best Disney animated musical feature film since the studio's renaissance era.[6][7] The film was also a massive commercial success; it accumulated nearly $1.3 billion in worldwide box office revenue, $400 million of which was earned in the United States and Canada and $247 million of which was earned in Japan. It ranks as the highest-grossing animated film of all time, the third highest-grossing original film of all time, the sixth highest-grossing film of all time, the highest-grossing film of 2013, and the third highest-grossing film in Japan. With over 18 million home media sales in 2014, it became the best-selling film of the year in the United States. By January 2015, Frozen had become the all-time best-selling Blu-ray Disc in the United States.[8]
An animated short sequel, Frozen Fever, premiered on March 13, 2015.[15] On March 12, 2015, a feature-length sequel was announced, with Buck and Lee returning as directors and Peter Del Vecho returning as producer, but a release date has not been disclosed.[16]

Plot[edit]

Elsa, Princess of Arendelle, possesses cryokinetic powers, with which she is able to produce or manipulate ice, frost and snow at will. One night while playing, she accidentally injures her younger sister, Princess Anna. Their shocked parents, the king and queen, seek help from the troll king, who heals Anna and removes her memories of Elsa's magic. The royal couple isolates the children in their castle until Elsa learns to control her powers. Afraid of hurting Anna again, Elsa spends most of her time alone in her room, refusing even to speak to Anna, and a rift develops between the sisters as they grow up. When the girls are teenagers, their parents die at sea during a storm.
When Elsa comes of age, the kingdom prepares for her coronation as queen. Among the guests is the Duke of Weselton, who seeks to exploit Arendelle for profit. Excited to be allowed out of the castle again, Princess Anna explores the town and meets Prince Hans of the Southern Isles; the two quickly develop a mutual attraction. Despite Elsa's fears, her coronation takes place without incident. During the reception, Hans proposes to Anna, who hastily accepts. However, Elsa refuses to grant her blessing and forbids their sudden marriage. The sisters argue, culminating in the exposure of Elsa's abilities in an emotional outburst.
Panicking, Elsa flees the castle, while inadvertently unleashing an eternal winter on the kingdom. High in the nearby mountains, she abandons her restraint, vowing to never return and building herself a solitary ice palace. Meanwhile, Anna leaves Hans in charge of Arendelle and sets out in search of her sister, determined to return her to Arendelle, end the winter, and mend their relationship. While obtaining supplies, Anna meets an iceman named Kristoff and his reindeer, Sven, and convinces Kristoff to guide her up the North Mountain. On their journey, the group encounters Olaf, Anna and Elsa's childhood snowman whom the latter recreated and unknowingly brought to life, who leads them to Elsa's hideaway.
Anna and Elsa reunite, but Elsa still fears hurting her sister. When Anna insists that Elsa return, she becomes agitated and her powers lash out, accidentally striking Anna in the heart. Horrified, Elsa forces Anna, Kristoff and Olaf to leave by creating a giant snow creature that chases them away from her palace. As they flee, Kristoff notices Anna's hair turning white and deduces that something is very wrong. He seeks help from the trolls, his adoptive family, who explain that Anna's heart has been frozen by Elsa. Unless it can be thawed by an "act of true love", she will become frozen solid forever. Believing that only Hans can save her with a true love's kiss, Kristoff races back with her to Arendelle.
Meanwhile, Hans, who is leading a search for Anna, reaches Elsa's palace. In the ensuing battle against the duke's men, Elsa is knocked unconscious and imprisoned in Arendelle. There, Hans pleads with her to undo the winter, but Elsa confesses that she has no idea how. When Anna reunites with Hans and begs him to kiss her to break the curse, Hans refuses and reveals that his true intention in marrying her is to seize control of Arendelle's throne. Leaving Anna to die, he charges Elsa with treason for her younger sister's apparent death.
Elsa escapes and heads out into the blizzard on the fjord. Olaf comes across Anna and reveals Kristoff is in love with her; they then escape onto the fjord to find him. Hans confronts Elsa, telling her Anna is dead because of her. In Elsa's despair, the storm suddenly ceases, giving Kristoff and Anna the chance to locate each other. Nevertheless, Anna, seeing that Hans is about to kill Elsa, throws herself between the two just as she freezes solid, blocking Hans' attack.
As Elsa grieves for her sister, Anna begins to thaw, since her decision to sacrifice herself to save her sister constitutes an "act of true love". Realizing love is the key to controlling her powers, Elsa reforms by thawing the kingdom and helps Olaf survive in summer. Hans is deported to the Southern Isles to face punishment for his crimes against the royal family of Arendelle, while Elsa cuts off trade with Weselton. Overjoyed, Anna and Kristoff share a kiss. The two sisters reconcile and Elsa promises never to shut the castle gates again.

Voice cast[edit]

Kristen Bell by Gage Skidmore.jpg Idina Menzel Defense.gov Crop.png
Jonathan Groff 2010.jpgJosh Gad at the 2010 Streamy Awards.jpgSantino Fontana performing Broadway's Cinderella.jpg
Top row (l–r): Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel
Bottom row (l–r): Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad and Santino Fontana

Development[edit]

Origins[edit]


Concept art from Disney's shelvedhand-drawn film adaptation of The Snow Queen[34]
Walt Disney Productions first began exploring a possible live action/animation biography film of author and poet Hans Christian Andersensometime in late 1937 before the December premiere of its film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length hand-drawn animated film ever made.[35]:10 In March 1940, Walt Disney suggested a co-production to film producer Samuel Goldwyn, whereGoldwyn's studio would shoot the live-action sequences of Andersen's life and Disney's studio would animate Andersen's fairy tales.[35]:10The animated sequences would be based on some of Andersen's best known works, such as The Little Mermaid, The Little Match Girl,The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Snow Queen, Thumbelina, The Ugly Duckling, The Red Shoes, and The Emperor's New Clothes. However, the studio encountered difficulty with The Snow Queen, as it could not find a way to adapt and relate the Snow Queen character to modern audiences. Even as far back as the 1930s and 1940s, it was clear that the source material contained great cinematic possibilities, but the Snow Queen character proved to be too problematic. After the United States entered World War II, the studio began to focus on making wartime propaganda, which caused development on the Disney–Goldwyn project to grind to a halt in 1942.[35]:10Goldwyn went on to produce his own live-action film version in 1952, entitled Hans Christian Andersen, with Danny Kaye as Andersen,Charles Vidor directing, Moss Hart writing, and Frank Loesser penning the songs. All of Andersen's fairy tales were, instead, told in song and ballet in live-action, like the rest of the film. It went on to receive six Academy Award nominations the following year. Back at Disney, The Snow Queen, along with other Andersen fairy tales (including The Little Mermaid), were shelved.[36]

Later efforts[edit]

"Hans Christian Andersen's original version of The Snow Queen is a pretty dark tale and it doesn't translate easily into a film. For us the breakthrough came when we tried to give really human qualities to the Snow Queen. When we decided to make the Snow Queen Elsa and our protagonist Anna sisters, that gave a way to relate to the characters in a way that conveyed what each was going through and that would relate for today's audiences. This film has a lot of complicated characters and complicated relationships in it. There are times when Elsa does villainous things but because you understand where it comes from, from this desire to defend herself, you can always relate to her. 'Inspired by' means exactly that. There is snow and there is ice and there is a Queen, but other than that, we depart from it quite a bit. We do try to bring scope and the scale that you would expect but do it in a way that we can understand the characters and relate to them."
– Producer Peter Del Vecho, on the difficulties adapting The Snow Queen[37]
In the late 1990s, Walt Disney Feature Animation started developing a new adaptation of The Snow Queen after the tremendous success of their recent films during the Disney Renaissance era, but the project was scrapped completely in late 2002, when Glen Keane reportedly quit the project[34] and went on to work on another project which became Tangled (2010). Even before then, Harvey Fierstein pitched his version of the story to Disney's executives, but was turned down.[36] Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, Dick Zondag and Dave Goetz reportedly all had their try on it, but failed.[36] After a number of unsuccessful attempts from 2000 to 2002, Disney shelved the project again.[35]:10–11During one of those attempts, Michael Eisner, then-chairman and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company, offered his support to the project and suggested doing it with Oscar-winning director John Lasseter at Pixar Animation Studios after the then-expected renewal of Pixar's contract with Disney.[38] But negotiations between Pixar and Disney collapsed in January 2004 and that contract was never renewed.[39] Instead, Eisner's successor Bob Iger negotiated Disney's purchase of Pixar in January 2006 for $7.4 billion, and Lasseter was promoted to chief creative officer of both Pixar and Disney Animation.[40][41]
The next attempt started in 2008, when Lasseter was able to convince Chris Buck (who co-directed the 1999 film Tarzan for the studio) to return to Walt Disney Feature Animation from Sony Pictures Animation (where he had recently co-directed the Oscar-nominated 2007 film Surf's Up); that September, Buck pitched several ideas to Lasseter, one of which was The Snow Queen.[35]:6,11 Buck later revealed that his initial inspiration for The Snow Queen was not the Andersen fairy tale itself, but that he wanted "to do something different on the definition of true love." "Disney had already done the 'kissed by a prince' thing, so [I] thought it was time for something new," he recalled.[42] It turned out Lasseter had been interested in The Snow Queen for a long time; back when Pixar was working with Disney on Toy Story in the 1990s, he saw and was "blown away" by some of the pre-production art from Disney's prior attempts.[35]:6 Development began under the title Anna and the Snow Queen, which was planned to be traditionally animated.[43] According to Josh Gad, he first became involved with the film at that early stage, when the plot was still relatively close to the original Andersen fairy tale and Megan Mullally was going to play Elsa.[44] By early 2010, the project entered development hell once again, when the studio again failed to find a way to make the story and the Snow Queen character work.[45][46]

Revitalization[edit]

On December 22, 2011, following the success of Tangled, Disney announced a new title for the film, Frozen, and a release date of November 27, 2013.[47] A month later, it was confirmed that the film would be a computer-animated feature in stereoscopic 3D, instead of the originally intended hand-drawn animation.[34] Anderson-Lopez and Lopez joined the project and started writing songs for Frozen in January 2012.[48]:44:00 On March 5, 2012, it was announced that Buck would be directing, with Lasseter and Peter Del Vechoproducing.[49]
After Disney decided to advance The Snow Queen into development again, one of the main challenges Buck and Del Vecho faced was the character of the Snow Queen, who was then a villain in their drafts.[36] The studio has a tradition of screening animated films in development every twelve weeks, then holding lengthy "notes sessions" in which its directors and screenwriters from different projects provide extensive "notes" on each other's work.[50][51][52]
Buck and Del Vecho presented their storyboards to Lasseter, and the entire production team adjourned to a conference to hear his thoughts on the project.[36] Art directorMichael Giaimo later acknowledged Lasseter as the "game changer" of the film: "I remember John saying that the latest version of The Snow Queen story that Chris Buck and his team had come up with was fun, very light-hearted. But the characters didn't resonate. They aren't multi-faceted. Which is why John felt that audiences wouldn't really be able to connect with them."[36]
The production team then addressed the film's problems, drafting several variations on The Snow Queen story until the characters and story felt relevant. At that stage, the first major breakthrough was the decision to rewrite the film's protagonist, Anna (who was based on the Gerda character from The Snow Queen), as the younger sibling of Elsa, thereby effectively establishing a family dynamic between the characters.[36][53] This was unusual in that relationships between sisters are rarely used as a major plot element in American animated films, with the notable exception of Disney's Lilo & Stitch (2002).[35]:13 To fully explore the unique dynamics of such relationships, Disney Animation convened a "Sister Summit," at which women from all over the studio who grew up with sisters were asked to discuss their relationships with their sisters.[35]:14

Writing[edit]

In March 2012, Jennifer Lee, one of the screenwriters of Wreck-It Ralph, was brought in as the film's screenwriter by Del Vecho.[54][55] Lee later explained that as Wreck-It Ralphwas wrapping up, she was giving notes on other projects, and "we kind of really connected with what we were thinking."[56]
According to Lee, several core concepts were already in place from Buck and Del Vecho's early work, such as the film's "frozen heart" hook: "That was a concept and the phrase ... an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart."[56] They already knew the ending involved true love in the sense of the emotional bond between siblings, not romance, in that "Anna was going to save Elsa. We didn’t know how or why."[56] Lee said Edwin Catmull, president of Disney Animation, told her early on about the film's ending: "First and foremost, no matter what you have to do to the story, do it. But you have to earn that ending. If you do[,] it will be great. If you don't, it will suck."[50]
Before Lee was brought on board, another screenwriter had made a first pass at a script, and Anderson-Lopez and Lopez tried to write songs for that script but none worked and all were cut.[48]:9:07 Then "the whole script imploded," which gave the songwriters the opportunity "to put a lot of [their] DNA" into the new script that Lee was writing.[48]:30:32 The production team "essentially started over and ... had 17 months," which resulted in a very "intense schedule" and implied "a lot of choices had to be made fast."[56]
The earlier versions differed sharply from the final version. In the original script the songwriters first saw, Elsa was evil from the start; she kidnapped Anna from her own wedding to intentionally freeze her heart, then later descended upon the town with an army of snowmen with the objective of recapturing Anna to freeze her heart properly.[48]:8:42 By the time Lee came in, the first act included Elsa deliberately striking Anna in the heart with her freezing powers; then "the whole second act was about Anna trying to get to Hans and to kiss him and then Elsa trying to stop her."[56] Buck revealed that the original plot attempted to make Anna sympathetic by focusing on her frustration as being perceived as the "spare" in relation to the "heir," Elsa.[57] The original plot also had different pacing, in that it was "much more of an action adventure" than a musical or a comedy.[54]
One major breakthrough was the composition of the song "Let It Go" by songwriters Lopez and Anderson-Lopez, which forced the production team to reconceptualize and rewrite Elsa as a far more complex, vulnerable, and sympathetic character.[53] In The Daily Telegraph‍ '​s words, instead of the villain envisioned by the producers, the songwriters saw Elsa as "a scared girl struggling to control and come to terms with her gift."[58] Lee recalled: "Bobby and Kristen said they were walking in Prospect Park and they just started talking about what would it feel like [to be Elsa]. Forget villain. Just what it would feel like. And this concept of letting out who she is[,] that she's kept to herself for so long[,] and she's alone and free, but then the sadness of the fact [sic] that the last moment is she's alone. It’s not a perfect thing, but it's powerful."[56] Del Vecho explained that "Let It Go" changed Elsa into a person "ruled by fear and Anna was ruled by her own love of other people and her own drive," which in turn caused Lee to "rewrite the first act and then that rippled through the entire movie. So that was when we really found the movie and who these characters were."[52]
Another major breakthrough was developing the plot twist that Prince Hans would be revealed as the film's true villain only near the end.[52] Hans was not even in the earliest drafts, then at first was not a villain, and after becoming one, was revealed to be evil much earlier in the plot.[52] Del Vecho said, "We realized [what] was most important [was] if we were going to make the ending so surprising[,] you had to believe at one point that Hans was the answer ... [when] he's not the answer, it's Kristoff ... [I]f you can get the audience to leap ahead and think they have figured it out[,] you can surprise them by turning it the other way."[52] Lee acknowledged that Hans was written as "sociopathic" and "twisted" throughout the final version.[56] For example, Hans mirrors the behavior of the other characters: "He mirrors [Anna] and he's goofy with her ... [T]he Duke [of Weselton] is a jerk, so he's a jerk back. And with Elsa he's a hero."[56] It was difficult to lay the foundation for Anna's belated turn to Kristoff without also making Hans' betrayal of Anna too predictable, in that the audience had to "feel ... her feeling something but not quite understanding it ... Because the minute it is [understood,] it deflated."[56] At one point, Anna openly flirted with Kristoff upon first meeting him, but that was changed after Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn pointed out that it would confuse and annoy viewers since Anna was already engaged to Hans.[59]
Lee had to work through the issue of how to write Anna's personality, in that some of her colleagues felt Anna should be more dysfunctional and co-dependent, like Vanellope von Schweetz in Wreck-It Ralph.[54] Lee disagreed with that position, but it took her almost a year to figure out how to convincingly articulate "this is what Anna's journey is. No more than that. No less than that."[56] In the end, Lee successfully argued Anna's journey should be presented as a simple coming-of-age story, "where she goes from having a naive view of life and love – because she's lonely – to the most sophisticated and mature view of love, where she's capable of the ultimate love, which is sacrifice."[54] Lee also had to let go of some ideas that she liked, such as a scene portraying Anna and Elsa's relationship as teenagers, which did not work because they needed to maintain the separation between Anna and Elsa.[54]
To construct Anna and Elsa's relationship as sisters, Lee found inspiration in her own relationship with her older sister.[56][60] Lee said her older sister was "a big inspiration for Elsa,"[56] called her "my Elsa" in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, and walked the red carpet with her at the 86th Academy Awards.[51] Lee explained, "[h]aving to ... lose each other and then rediscover each other as adults, that was a big part of my life."[56]
The production team also turned Olaf from Elsa's obnoxious sidekick into Anna's comically innocent sidekick.[56] Lee's initial response to the original "mean" version of Olaf had been, "Kill the f-ing snowman," and she found Olaf by far "the hardest character to deal with."[56]
The problem of how exactly Anna would save Elsa at the film's climax was solved by story artist John Ripa. At the story meeting where Ripa pitched his take on the story, the response was silence until Lasseter said, "I've never seen anything like that before," which was followed by a standing ovation.[35]:31
Along the way, the production team went through drafts where the first act included far more detail than what ended up in the final version, such as a troll with a Brooklyn accentwho would have explained the backstory behind Elsa's magical powers, and a regent for whom Lee was hoping to cast comedian Louis C.K.[56] After all those details were thoroughly "over-analyzed", they were excised because they amounted to a "much more complex story than really we felt like we could fit in this 90-minute film."[56] As Del Vecho put it, "the more we tried to explain things at the beginning, the more complicated it got."[61]

Production[edit]

Actress Kristen Bell was cast as the voice of Anna on March 5, 2012.[25][49] Lee admitted that Bell's casting selection was influenced after the filmmakers listened to a series of vocal tracks Bell had recorded when she was young, where the actress performed several songs from The Little Mermaid, including "Part of Your World".[62] Bell completed her recording sessions while she was pregnant, and subsequently re-recorded some of her character's lines after her pregnancy, as her voice had deepened.[63] Bell was called in to re-record dialogue for the film "probably 20 times," which is normal for lead roles in Disney animated films whose scripts are still evolving.[64] As for her approach to the role of Anna, Bell enthused that she had "dreamed of being in a Disney animated film" since she was four years old,[25] saying, "I always loved Disney animation, but there was something about the females that was unattainable to me. Their posture was too good and they were too well-spoken, and I feel like I really made this girl much more relatable and weirder and scrappier and more excitable and awkward. I'm really proud of that."[65]
Frozen is "a bit of a feminist movie for Disney. I'm really proud of that. It has everything, but it's essentially about sisterhood. I think that these two women are competitive with one another, but always trying to protect each other – sisters are just so complicated. It's such a great relationship to have in movies, especially for young kids."
– Idina Menzel, on her impression of Frozen[62]
Idina Menzel, a Broadway veteran, was cast as Elsa. Menzel had formerly auditioned for Tangled, but did not get the part. However, Tangled‍ '​s casting director, Jamie Sparer Roberts, preserved a recording of Menzel's performance on her iPhone, and on the basis of that, asked her to audition along with Bell for Frozen.[66]Before they were officially cast, Menzel and Bell deeply impressed the directors and producers at an earlytable read; after reading the entire script out loud, they sang "Wind Beneath My Wings" together as a duet, since no music had been composed yet.[22][53][66] Bell had suggested that idea when she visited Menzel at her California home to prepare together for the table read.[66][67] The songwriters were also present for the table read; Anderson-Lopez said "Lasseter was in heaven" upon hearing Menzel and Bell sing in harmony, and from that moment forward, he insisted, "Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel have to be in the movie!"[48]:32:07 Lee said, "They sung [sic] it like sisters and what you mean to me[,] [a]nd there wasn't a dry eye in the house after they sang."[52] Between December 2012 and June 2013, the casting of additional roles was announced, including Jonathan Groff as Kristoff,[26]Alan Tudyk as the Duke of Weselton, Santino Fontana as Prince Hans, and Josh Gad as Olaf.[28]
Following Lee's extensive involvement in Frozen‍ '​s development process and her close work with director Buck and songwriters Lopez and Anderson-Lopez,[37] studio heads Lasseter and Catmull promoted her to co-director of the film alongside Buck in August 2012.[50][68] Her promotion was officially announced on November 29, 2012,[69] making Lee the first woman to direct a full-length animated motion picture produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios.[53] She primarily worked on story while Buck focused on animation.[37][52] Lee later stated that she was "really moved by a lot of what Chris had done" and that they "shared a vision" of the story, having "very similar sensibilities".[50]
By November 2012, the production team thought they had finally "cracked" the puzzle of how to make the film's story work,[35]:155 but according to Del Vecho, in late February 2013, it was realized that the film still "wasn't working", which necessitated even more rewriting of scenes and songs from February through June 2013.[61][70][71] He explained, "we rewrote songs, we took out characters and changed everything, and suddenly the movie gelled. But that was close. In hindsight, piece of cake, but during, it was a big struggle."[61] Looking back, Anderson-Lopez joked she and Lopez thought at the time they could end up working as "birthday party clown[s]" if the final product "pull[ed] ... down" their careers[48]:19:07 and recalled that "we were really writing up until the last minute."[72] In June (five months before the already-announced release date), the songwriters finally got the film working when they composed the song "For the First Time in Forever", which, in Lopez's words, "became the linchpin of the whole movie."[48]:19:24
That month, Disney conducted test screenings of the half-completed film with two audiences (one made up of families and the other made up of adults)[70] in Phoenix, Arizona,[60]at which Lasseter and Catmull were personally present.[56][73] Lee recalled that it was the moment when they realized they "had something, because the reaction was huge."[73]Catmull, who had instructed Lee at the outset to "earn that ending," told her afterwards, "you did it".[56]

Animation[edit]

Similar to Tangled, Frozen employed a unique artistic style by blending together features of both computer-generated imagery (CGI) and traditional hand-drawn animation.[74]From the beginning, Buck knew Giaimo was the best candidate to develop the style he had in mind – which would draw from the best Disney hand-drawn classics of the 1950s, the Disney Little Golden Books, and mid-century modern design – and persuaded him to come back to Disney to serve as the art director for Frozen.[35]:33 Buck, Lasseter, and Giaimo were all old friends who had first met at the California Institute of the Arts,[35]:33 and Giaimo had previously served as the art director for Disney's Pocahontas (1995), which Buck had worked on as a supervising animator.[75]
To create the look of Frozen, Giaimo began pre-production research by reading extensively about the entire region of Scandinavia and visiting the Danish-themed city of Solvangnear Los Angeles, but eventually zeroed in on Norway in particular because "80 percent" of the visuals that appealed to him were from Norway.[76] Disney eventually sponsored three research field trips.[77] Animators and special effects specialists were dispatched to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to experience walking, running, and falling in deep snow in a variety of types of attire, including long skirts (which both female and male personnel tried on);[37][76][77][78] while lighting and arts teams visited an Ice Hotel in Quebec City, Quebec to study how light reflects and refracts on snow and ice.[61] Finally, Giaimo and several artists traveled to Norway to draw inspiration from its mountains, fjords, architecture, and culture.[77][79] "We had a very short time schedule for this film, so our main focus was really to get the story right but we knew that John Lasseter is keen on truth in the material and creating a believable world, and again that doesn't mean it's a realistic world – but a believable one. It was important to see the scope and scale of Norway, and important for our animators to know what it's like," Del Vecho said.[80] "There is a real feeling of Lawrence of Arabia scope and scale to this," he finished.[80]
During 2012, while Giaimo and the animators and artists conducted preparatory research and developed the film's overall look, the production team was still struggling to develop a compelling script, as explained above. That problem was not adequately solved until November 2012,[35]:155 and the script would later require even more significant revisions after that point.[61][70] As a result, the single "most daunting" challenge facing the animation team was a short schedule of less than 12 months to turn Lee's still-evolving shooting script into an actual film.[35]:155 Other films like Pixar's Toy Story 2 had been successfully completed on even shorter schedules, but a short schedule necessarily meant "late nights, overtime, and stress."[35]:155 Lee estimated the total size of the entire team on Frozen to be around 600 to 650 people, "including around 70 lighting people[,] 70-plus animators," and 15 to 20 storyboard artists.[81]
Del Vecho explained how the film's animation team was organized: "On this movie we do have character leads, supervising animators on specific characters. The animators themselves may work on multiple characters but it's always under one lead. I think it was different on Tangled, for example, but we chose to do it this way as we wanted one person to fully understand and develop their own character and then be able to impart that to the crew. Hyrum Osmond, the animator on Olaf, is quiet but he has a funny, wacky personality so we knew he'd bring a lot of comedy to it; Anna's animator, Becky Bresee, it's her first time leading a character and we wanted her to lead Anna."[37][53][82] Acting coach Warner Loughlin was brought in to help the film's animators understand the characters they were creating.[78] In order to get the general feeling of each scene, some animators did their own acting. "I actually film myself acting the scene out, which I find very helpful," said animation supervisor Rebecca Wilson Bresee. This helped her discover elements that made the scene feel real and believable.[83] Elsa's supervising animator was Wayne Unten, who asked for that role because he was fascinated by the complexity of the character.[84] Unten carefully developed Elsa's facial expressions in order to bring out her fear as contrasted against Anna's fearlessness.[84] He also studied videos from Menzel's recording sessions and animated Elsa's breathing to match Menzel's breathing.[78]
Regarding the look and nature of the film's cinematography, Giaimo was greatly influenced by Jack Cardiff's work in Black Narcissus. According to him, it lent a hyper-reality to the film: "Because this is a movie with such scale and we have the Norwegian fjords to draw from, I really wanted to explore the depth. From a design perspective, since I was stressing the horizontal and vertical aspects, and what the fjords provide, it was perfect. We encased the sibling story in scale." Ted D. McCord's work in The Sound of Music was another major influence for Giaimo. It was also Giaimo's idea that Frozen should be filmed in the CinemaScope aspect ratio, which was approved by Lasseter.[82] Giaimo also wanted to ensure that Norway's fjords, architecture and rosemaling folk art, were critical factors in designing the environment of Arendelle. Giaimo, whose background is in traditional animation, said that the art design environment represents a unity of character and environment and that he originally wanted to incorporate saturated colors, which is typically ill-advised in computer animation.[82] For further authenticity, a live reindeer named Sage was brought into the studio for animators to study its movements and mannerisms for the character Sven.[85][86]
Another important issue Giaimo insisted on addressing was costumes, in that he "knew from the start" it would be a "costume film."[35]:77 To realize that vision, he brought in character designer Jean Gillmore to act as a dedicated "costume designer".[87] While traditional animation simply integrates costume design with character design and treats clothing as merely part of the characters, computer-generated animation regards costume as almost a separate entity with its own properties and behaviors[87] – and Frozenrequired a level of as-yet untried detail, down to minutiae like fabrics, buttons, trim, and stitching.[35]:76 Gillmore explained that her "general approach was to meld the historic silhouettes of 1840 Western Europe (give or take), with the shapes and garment relationships and details of folk costume in early Norway, circa 19th century."[87] This meant using primarily wool fabric with accents of velvet, linen, and silk.[35]:75 During production, Giaimo and Gillmore "ran around" supplying various departments with real-world samples to use as references; they were able to draw upon both the studio's own in-house library of fabric samples and the resources of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts' costume division in Fullerton, California.[87] The film's "look development artists" (the Disney job title for texture artists[88]:58–59) created the digitally painted simulation of the appearance of surfaces, while other departments dealt with movement, rigging and weight, thickness and lighting of textile animation.[87]
During production, the film's English title was changed from The Snow Queen to Frozen, a decision that drew comparisons to another Disney film, Tangled. Peter Del Vecho explained that "the title Frozen came up independently of the title Tangled. It's because, to us, it represents the movie. Frozen plays on the level of ice and snow but also the frozen relationship, the frozen heart that has to be thawed. We don't think of comparisons between Tangled and Frozen, though." He also mentioned that the film will still retain its original title, The Snow Queen, in some countries: "because that just resonated stronger in some countries than Frozen. Maybe there's a richness to The Snow Queen in the country's heritage and they just wanted to emphasize that."[37]

Technology development[edit]


Test animation demonstrating snow effects employed in the film
The studio also developed several new tools to generate realistic and believable shots, particularly the heavy and deep snow and its interactions with the characters. Disney wanted an "all-encompassing" and organic tool to provide snow effects but not require switching between different methods.[89] As noted above, several Disney artists and special effects personnel traveled to Wyoming to experience walking through deep snow.[76] Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, a professor from the California Institute of Technology, was invited to give lectures to the effects group on how snow and ice form, and why snowflakes are unique.[76] Using this knowledge, the effects group created a snowflake generator that allowed them to randomly create 2,000 unique snowflake shapes for the film.[83]
Another challenge that the studio had to face was to deliver shots of heavy and deep snow that both interacted believably with characters and had a realistic sticky quality.[89] According to principal software engineer Andrew Selle, "[Snow]'s not really a fluid. It’s not really a solid. It breaks apart. It can be compressed into snowballs. All of these different effects are very difficult to capture simultaneously."[76] In order to achieve this, software engineers used advanced mathematics (the material point method) and physics, with assistance from mathematics researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles[90][91] to create a snow simulator software application calledMatterhorn. The tool was capable of depicting realistic snow in a virtual environment and was used in at least 43 scenes in the film, including several key sequences.[53][89][90][92] Software engineer Alexey Stomakhin referred to snow as "an important character in the film,"[90] therefore it attracted special attention from the filmmakers.[76] "When you stretch it, snow will break into chunks. Since snow doesn't have any connections, it doesn't have a mesh, it can break very easily. So that was an important property we took advantage of," explained Selle. "There you see [Kristoff] walking through and see his footprints breaking the snow into little pieces and chunk up and you see [Anna] being pulled out and the snow having packed together and broken into pieces. It's very organic how that happens. You don't see that they're pieces already – you see the snow as one thing and then breaking up."[89] The tool also proved to be particularly useful in scenes involving characters walking through deep snow, as it ensured that the snow reacted naturally to each step.[76]
Other tools designed to help artists complete complicated effects included Spaces, which allowed Olaf's deconstructible parts to be moved around and rebuilt, Flourish, which allowed extra movement such as leaves and twigs to be art-directed; Snow Batcher, which helped preview the final look of the snow, especially when characters were interacting with an area of snow by walking through a volume, and Tonic, which enabled artists to sculpt their characters' hair as procedural volumes.[89] Tonic also aided in animating fur and hair elements such as Elsa's hair, which contains 420,000 computer-generated strands, while the average number for a real human being is only 100,000.[76] The number ofcharacter rigs in Frozen is 312 and the number of simulated costumes also reached 245 cloth rigs, which were far beyond all other Disney films to date.[21][83] Fifty effects artists and lighting artists worked together on the technology to create "one single shot" in which Elsa builds her ice palace. Its complexity required 30 hours to render each frame, with 4,000 computers rendering one frame at a time.[93][94]
Besides 3D effects, the filmmakers also used 2D artwork and drawings for specific elements and sequences in the film, including Elsa's magic and snow sculptures, as well as freezing fountains and floors.[89][92] The effects group created a "capture stage" where the entire world of Frozen gets displayed on monitors, which can be "filmed" on special cameras to operate a three-dimensional scene. "We can take this virtual set that's mimicking all of my actions and put it into any one of our scenes in the film," said technology manager Evan Goldberg.[83]

 

 

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