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March 12, 2014

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A must-have for articles about the film's songs.

February 19, 2014

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Artists had to employ new technology to build some of the more entertaining and amusing characters in Frozen, particularly Olaf. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney created software called Spaces to allow artists to deconstruct the character and rebuild him as part of the animation process.
A symbol of that love, and of a relationship gone cold, is a snowman the girls built together as kids. That idea became the basis for "Frozen’s" comic-relief character, Olaf — a living snowman with the voice of comic actor Josh Gad.

The task of making Olaf come to life fell to one of the film’s supervising animators, Hyrum Osmond, a Utah native and an alumnus of Brigham Young University and Utah Valley State College (now Utah Valley University). And, yes, he is "one of the thousands" in the mighty Osmond clan. (Hyrum’s father is George Virl Osmond Jr., the nonperforming oldest brother of singing siblings Merrill, Wayne, Alan, Jay, Donny, Marie and Jimmy.)

"My personality’s a bit like Olaf," Osmond said of the goofy character.

Creating Olaf began with Lee’s script and expanded with Gad giving voice to Olaf’s dialogue — and ad-libbing his own additions. Gad’s studio performance was videotaped, and animators used his facial expressions and physical moves as a reference point for animating the character.

One wrinkle is that Olaf, being a snowman, sometimes loses his head. Or torso.

"It was kind of an animator’s dream," Osmond said. "You have a character that can come apart. We said to the animation crew, ‘Just have fun with it.’ He really is that one character in the film you can just do anything with."

Olaf "represents innocent love," Lee said. "He represented the joy they had when they were young before they were split. … It wasn’t until he meant something to the girls that he resonated with us."

But while most of the characters have a more grounded in reality feel to them, the character of Olaf the snowman (voiced by Josh Gad) is a different sort of animated creature.

"The reason for that was originally Olaf started as...Elsa had all these guards, she created all these guards for her ice palace," said Buck. "We said Olaf was the very first guard that she created and we always talked about she was trying to learn about her powers. So we talked about it like it's the first pancake. You know that pancakes get burned on the bottom that you throw out. Well, that's Olaf. Olaf was her first pancake."

"And when you're a child the awkwardness and the funny shapes you make with the snowmen, the heads are never perfect and that was just ideal to us for who he would be and what as kids we think about snowmen," said Lee.

Olaf the snowman (Josh Gadd) isn't just funny, he's also got a "big role to play representing the innocent love in the scale of fear versus love," says Lee.
Olaf was very much a sketch until we had Josh Gad, and then we would just get in the room and play and we’d have a lot of fun and that’s really how we found his voice specifically and how he looks at the world. It really was working with Josh that did that.
The fun part of Olaf, we learned early on that his body parts can fall apart and we knew that we would want to take full advantage of that. You will see quite a bit more of that in the movie in a surprising way.
How does one prepare to play a snowman?
JG: I prepared by spending a couple of months in a meat locker, not all at once, I would just go in and kind of sit there and take it on. And then I realized that it was really unnecessary. So, I started just acting.
No, really, doing a voice in a Disney movie is kind of a dream come true for me. I've always been such a massive fan of those movies in general, the animated movies in particular. I grew up seeing "Little Mermaid," seeing "Aladdin," seeing "Lion King" – kind of in the Golden Age of Animation, or the Second Golden Age of Animation. I was a young and impressionable kid, and those movies to me we're part of the reason that I wanted to be in this. I remember seeing "Aladdin" and being blown away by Robin Williams as the Genie, and saying, “I want to do that one day. I really want to do that.” Or Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella in "Lion King" as Timon and Pumbaa. It looked so cool to be a part of that. And so, when I got the phone call I was like, "Are you kidding me?" I literally was screaming like a little girl.
You were talking about Nathan Lane and Robin Williams; did you base your Olaf on any previous sidekicks?
JG: Well, I think that he continues a great tradition of that kind of sidekick comic relief from the films. Those were always the roles that stayed with me. The princesses weren't necessarily what I was attracted to. It was the idea of these goofy kind of sidekicks because they were instantly relatable to me. Even going back as far as Jiminy Cricket and Baloo, that long tradition of that kind of goofy conscience, or that other view of the world that has comedic sensibility. It was something I was always attracted to. So I definitely wanted to keep that joy of what that meant to people alive and hopefully not screw up the grand tradition of it all.
How do you go about bringing that joy to the booth?
JG: I think that it all begins and ends with the directors and Chris [Buck] and Jen [Lee] really allowed us to play. There was so much improv and there was so much generosity in allowing me to do my version of certain things and then work with them to figure out what was gonna set him apart. Their stuff is so genius to begin with that you don't really need to do much, but that playfulness definitely was encouraged, and to a large extent they used a lot of it. So, I was really happy to see that my contributions kind of made their way into the film as well. And then I had the chance to sit down with the animators who also kind of utilized my facial expressions and all of that stuff to bring this character to life. It's really a fascinating and amazing process.
I know there's a "Book of Mormon" connection here, how did that play out?
JG: Well, Bobby [Lopez] unfortunately knows my voice very well so he, just without fail, decides to write notes that are stupid and unnecessarily high. I can't fight him because I know that he knows that my voice can do dumb things, but I don't like to do dumb things. So I feel like the Lopez husband and wife team took advantage of my voice and it hurt me a little bit.
No, it's always such a thrill to work with Bobby and Kristen and I would literally do anything for them.
When you're hot, you're hot? How does that mesh with being a snowman?
JG: [Big laugh] I'm very, very lucky. Every day I wake up and I pinch myself. I had this surreal moment where I took my daughter to Disneyland while I was promoting "Frozen" at D23, and I got to see the "World of Color," which I'm going to be hosting for the winter months – it's a night time show at Disneyland – and I'm seeing this overlay play out in front of me, and I see all these iconic Disney characters that I grew up with, and going back to ones my grandparents grew up with, like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." And I'm looking at it and I'm going, “My God, I'm a part of this now.” Like, people are going to come to Disneyland, and they're going to see and hear my voice as part of this tradition and it's really amazing. You don't take it for granted.
Kristen was kind of attached, and Josh was sort of attached.

This article contains lots of materials about the film's music.

Olaf (voice of Josh Gad)
He’s Olaf and he likes warm hugs. Sprung from Elsa’s magical powers, Olaf is by far the friendliest snowman to walk the mountains above Arendelle. His innocence, outgoing personality and uncanny ability to disassemble himself at good and not-so-good times lead to some awkward, albeit laughable moments. He may also have the world’s most impossible dream, but what he doesn’t know won’t melt him—or will it?
It was a lot funnier than I expected, thanks largely to Josh Gad’s surprisingly well-written deluded snowman character, and the footage had a very strong sense of place and mood, all rendered beautifully.
We have the contrast of Olaf being a Snowman but loving the idea of Summer.
Olaf has become his own sort of standout comic character and the animators are having fun animating him. There’s a lot of squash in there – I mean, a lot – and he’s the only character we can throw off a cliff and have him come apart on the way down, still survive and be happy.
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.

:In the articles about "For the First time in Forever" you'll definitely need this.

(In the coming articles about other characters, you may find pieces for Kristoff right here. Quote: "“For the First Time in Forever” came from a story-room conversation when someone in the room said ‘for the first time in forever’ that’s when it became apparent that was going to be Anna’s song in the film.")
Can you talk about Olaf? Does he have a backstory?
Lee: When Anna and Elsa were very little, and before Elsa’s powers accidentally hurt Anna, they played. They’d sneak away and play with her powers. And you see them roll the snowman. He’s not magical. He doesn’t come to life. But they name him Olaf and he likes warm hugs.
Buck: Anna even does this little face with buck teeth.
Lee: It inspires the look. And so when Elsa is singing “Let It Go” obviously the first thing she goes to is the last moment she was happy. And it was that moment. And so he’s imbued with that. He’s innocent love. Like I say, we keep saying, the real themes are sort of the power of love versus fear. And he represents the most innocent love. And he’s also got a lot of the young Anna’s characteristics, because I think to Elsa that’s who she really loved. And so he was just a lot of fun, and emotionally he’ll bring a lot that we weren’t able to show you yet, too. So he’s funny in the kids-state-the-obvious kind of way.
Buck: And he can say very poignant things too.
Lee: Very poignant, the way kids sometimes just go right to it.
To create Olaf, Disney created software called Spaces, which allowed artists to deconstruct the character -- and rebuild him -- as part of the animation process; and Flourish, which allowed artists to more easily add extra movement, for instance to the twigs on Olaf's head.
"Mind you, even with Josh back on board, it still took us a while to figure out what to do with Olaf. For a time, this snowman character was Elsa's main henchmen and his magical ability was -- thanks to his carrot nose -- he could smell anything that was coming from miles & miles away," Bobby recalled. "But that didn't work. It just didn't make sense. More to the point, given how appealing Olaf's design was, it seemed to be a waste of this character's true potential."
"We must have spent two weeks just talking about this one character, trying to find a more organic way to make Olaf part of Frozen's story. Not to mention finding a way to make this character fun," Kristen continued. "We kept looking for ways to make Olaf part of Anna and Elsa's early childhood, that innocent time when these two sisters were still close. And then when we came up with the idea that Olaf is this snowman who's obsessed with summer ... Well, that just plugged into our innocence theme. There was just something so poignant about a character being that naive."
And given that they now had this story hook for Olaf, Bobby & Kristen then went ahead and wrote In Summer, this snowman's salute to summer. Which both movie critics and animation fans have singled out as the comic highlight of Disney Frozen.
  • http://[Examiner]/article/exclusive-interview-with-frozen-directors-chris-buck-and-jennifer-lee
Can you speak about Olaf and Josh Gad voicing him?
Chris: Josh was again one of the first one's that came in and Josh did a first table read as Olaf and…it was before "Book of Mormon." Everybody thinks that he was involved because of Lopez, but he was first. But he just had that great innocent charm that was always there with Olaf that we revised him quite a bit and especially when Jen came on, but he still remained with that childlike innocence. Josh has kind of that impish quality that Olaf has. He always wanted that character for same thing to happen to him. [Olaf] was always going to fall apart, he was always going to have the arms…and be that very kind of innocent guy that didn't really know even at times that he says things are very profound. He really didn't know what he was saying, he just says this things.
Josh did so much ad-libbing. We always had the essence of Olaf, but we played in that first session and he took that character to another level.

February 16, 2014

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The acting was consistently believable throughout the whole film. Kristen Bell plays the bubbly and spirited Anna. Not only was she able to nail those vibratos and belting notes in her songs, it was actually her singing them. I found that most Disney movies use different voice actors or actresses and singers in order to truly have a super musical performance, but the one downside would be the voices never really matched up. However, both lovely actresses managed to shine in both their acting and singing talents.
Idina Menzel's "Let it Go" is by far one of the greatest songs in the movie. The context of the story is spot-on as Queen Elsa trudges on in the lonely mountains, distraught at the revelation of her cryokinetic powers at her coronation. The emotional buildup of her character was flawless as the song starts with a shy, introverted girl who has shun everyone from her world in an attempt to protect them to the revelation that she is truly alone in her kingdom of (ice)olation with no one to harm. After almost 10 long years of solitude, she literally lets herself go and lets down her hair along her previous fear of her powers, and the audience is in for a treat with the graphics of this particular song as well as the whole movie.
Frozen did have some of the typical princess falling immediately in love with a prince nonsense. [...] However, it was somewhat disappointing to learn that this was Anna's only personal development in her character compared to her emotionally evolving sister.
The story, which is loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," has that magical Disney depth I haven't felt since the 1990s, and I was hooked from beginning to end. I never lost interest in the drastic measures Anna took or the tribulations Elsa faced. Every event throughout this epic quest falls into place at the right moment, taking the audience on a compelling journey they'll not soon forget.
And don't get me started on the music, which is nothing short of marvelous. Christophe Beck's score, along with Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez's catchy songs, deliver on its promise to not only drive home the adventure that Anna and her allies undertake, but also bring the emotional fear growing in Elsa's heart into sharper focus. Bell, Groff, and Gad handle their singing parts well, but it's Menzel who takes the cake; it's impossible not to be blown away by "Let It Go," which showcases the Tony Award-winning actress’s powerful belting technique. (For the Reception section in the articles about the soundtrack and "Let It Go")
The relationship between Anna and Elsa is as genuine as I've seen in a live-action setting, and watching those themes of family and love versus isolation and fear touched my heart in more ways than one.
It was also refreshing to see Kristoff undergo a transformation from a regular guy to a hero with a purpose. And boy, Olaf's dreams of finding warmth have just made my appreciation of snowmen even greater. But to have your animated characters come to life, you need a top-notch voice cast to pull off such a feat, and "Frozen" does just that. (For the article about the film's other characters)
Kristen Bell earns top marks for instilling a spirited sensibility in the clumsy yet well-meaning Anna. Idina Menzel brings a graceful vulnerability to Elsa, the Snow Queen, combining her fear of losing control with her desire to be free to create a layered character for the ages. Jonathan Groff rises to the challenge of making Kristoff both a normal person and a hero, and succeeds. Josh Gad is downright funny in his role of Olaf the Snowman, whose sense of humor indicates a heart that doesn't physically exist. (For the article about other characters)
Did I mention the songs? Yes, Frozen is a musical, even more so than Tangled. The songs come courtesy of Robert and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Tony Winners for Avenue Q and Book of Mormon), and will inevitably be stuck in your head — the way all classic Disney songs should. Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell sing their hearts out, with two showstoppers in "Let it Go" and "For the First Time in Forever" (which harkens to Menzel's own Wicked). And anyone who knows Josh Gad's theater background (Broadway's Book of Mormon) won't be surprised to find he has a hilarious number called "In the Summer" as the snowman belts his heart out about how much he'd love to see the season. Surprisingly, Jonathan Groff is only given one pseudo-musical number considering his singing ability, but this is the Elsa and Anna show and their characters are always center stage.

February 8, 2014

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For Anna (Disney)'s "Reception" section

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But children can also root for Anna to race through the forest and break through Elsa’s icy walls and prove that love conquers all fears. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quenhitran (talk • contribs) 09:06, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
Anna can go from cute to melancholy to odd to defiant and never miss a beat.
What truly makes the film is the relationship between Anna and Elsa and the moral that comes with it. When Elsa freezes Anna’s heart, the only thing that can save her is an act of true love, and the plot is set up to lead the viewer into thinking that it needs to be true love’s kiss—something which Anna then goes to seek. This journey sends her on a diffucult adventure in which she learns about both sacrifice and love.
Disney is sure to draw audiences far and wide with its most lovable and charismatic characters yet in the upcoming movie "Frozen."
Elsa and Anna are depicted as devoted from the start when, as little girls, big sister Elsa accidentally hurts Anna while the pair are playing with Elsa's powers.
[Anna's] confusion and Elsa's anguish as she shuts herself away from the world -- and her sister -- is palatable.
Female driven with confidence and positivity, Elsa and Anna are like two sides of a coin, both strong, albeit one through power and confidence and the other through clumsy sticktuitiveness and love, and through it all Lee maintains a timeless classicism that we all hold dear.
She's exactly the free spirit she seems to be, and all the more endearing for it.
Better to focus on the stunning icicle kingdom, snowy landscape visuals and the engaging female characters, especially the funny, iron-willed Anna, whose love for her sister propels her quest. ([the author] described the sisters as "engaging female characters", particularly praised Anna for being funny and iron-willed...)
What’s so great about Frozen is that we get two strong heroines, both complex and flawed whose journeys are incredibly identifiable. Anna is plucky and socially awkward and that’s great because many girls will identify with a girl who isn’t necessarily naturally poised like some of the original princesses. This is a girl who hasn’t had much human contact and when she does just explodes into unfiltered extroversion and naiveté.(Anna, perhaps quote box)
Elsa’s “Let it Go” is truly the epitome of the “I Am” numbers of Disney’s musical catalog and that’s only reinforced by the powerful vocals of Broadway’s Idina Menzel. (Let It Go)
Writers Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck have crafted two very real girls who come into their own and also come together in this amazing tale.(Anna)
There's so much to love about Frozen, but at the top of the list is the emphasis on [Anna] and Elsa's relationship. Anna still has an infatuation with the charming Hans and romantic chemistry with the flustered Kristoff, but her greatest love is for her sister. Elsa may be the antagonist, but she's not the villain. It would have been so easy to make Elsa power mad and vengeful, but she's mostly scared and guilt-ridden. She's an incredibly sympathetic character, and it's a fresh spin on depicting estrangement between siblings. Anna has so much life and enthusiasm, and we want to see her share it with Elsa.

Might be helpful in the future

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Of the many tunes from "Avenue Q" and "The Book of Mormon" songwriter Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the wistful "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" is by far the most poignant. (for the coming "Do You Want to Build A Snowman?" article)
This soaring declaration of independence is the reason you want a performer of Menzel's caliber in this role, and it's the film's musical highlight.("Let It Go" critical reaction)
“Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” is a whimsical charmer sung by Bell, proving to have a pleasing voice.
The film’s first number “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” is bittersweet as it shows the girls growing apart as time goes on and not even the death of their parents can bring Elsa out of her room.
Not only that but that it has a place in the new world of CG animation and is a delightful addition of Disney’s musical collection. The music by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez really combines what we know and love from Disney with their grasp of this generation’s desires and sense of humor. Menzel and Bell did a fantastic job in giving girls new heroines to love. (the original songs)
Unfortunately, Frozen's score is sadly unmemorable, without the catchy tunes and wordplay found in movies like Tangled. (score negative review)
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