Background 's shelved
hand-drawn film adaptation of
The Snow Queen In March 1940,
Walt Disney suggested a co-production to film producer
Samuel Goldwyn in which
Goldwyn's studio would shoot the live-action scenes of Andersen's life and Disney's studio would animate Andersen's fairy tales. {{quote box|quote=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. Walt Disney Feature Animation began developing a new adaptation of
The Snow Queen during the late 1990s, after the success of its
Disney Renaissance-era films (1989–1999), but the project was scrapped in late 2002 when
Glen Keane reportedly quit and worked on another project which became
Tangled (2010). Before then,
Harvey Fierstein pitched his version of the story to Disney executives but was turned down. Negotiations between Pixar and Disney collapsed in January 2004, however, and the contract was not renewed. 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 Pixar and Disney Animation.
Development Development began in 2008, when Lasseter convinced
Chris Buck (who co-directed the 1999 film
Tarzan for the studio) to return to Walt Disney Animation Studios from
Sony Pictures Animation, where he had co-directed the 2007 film ''
Surf's Up. Buck pitched several ideas to Lasseter that September, one of which was The Snow Queen
. While working with Disney on Toy Story in the 1990s, Lasseter was blown away by early concept art for The Snow Queen''.
Josh Gad said that 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. By early 2010, the project was in
development hell when the studio again failed to find a way to make the story and the Snow Queen character work. On December 22, 2011, following the success of
Tangled, Disney announced a new title for the film
Frozenand a release date of November 27, 2013. It was confirmed a month later that the film would be a computer-animated feature in
stereoscopic 3D instead of the originally intended hand-drawn animation, due to complex elements in the script requiring strong visuals. It was announced on March 5 of that year that Buck would direct the film, with Lasseter and
Peter Del Vecho producing. One of the main challenges Buck and Del Vecho faced after Disney placed
The Snow Queen into development again was the title character, who was a villain in their drafts. Buck and Del Vecho presented their storyboards to Lasseter, and the production team adjourned to a conference room to hear his thoughts about the project. This was unusual; a relationship between sisters is rarely a major plot element of American animated films, with the exception of Disney's
Lilo & Stitch (2002). Efforts by the previous screen- and songwriters had "imploded" before Lee was hired, The revised plot focused on musical comedy, with less action and adventure. "Bobby and Kristen ... started talking about what would it feel like [to be Elsa]", Lee said. "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 that the last moment is she's alone". Lee had to work through developing Anna's personality; some of her colleagues felt that the character should be more dysfunctional and
co-dependent. She called her older sister "my Elsa" in a
Los Angeles Times op-ed, and walked the red carpet with her at the 86th Academy Awards. With Lee's extensive involvement in the development process, Her promotion was announced that November, making her the first woman to direct a full-length animated film from Walt Disney Animation Studios. "[W]e 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." In June (five months before the announced release date) the songwriters got the film working when they composed "
For the First Time in Forever", which, according to Lopez, "became the linchpin of the whole movie". Lee recalled that it was the moment when they realized they "had something, because the reaction was huge". Bell completed her
Frozen recording sessions while she was pregnant and rerecorded some lines after her pregnancy, when her voice had deepened. She 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 evolving. About her approach to the role of Anna, Bell said that she had "dreamed of being in a Disney animated film" since she was four years old; {{quote box|quote=[
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, a
Broadway veteran, was cast as Elsa. Menzel had auditioned for
Tangled, but did not get the part.
Tangled casting director Jamie Sparer Roberts kept a recording of Menzel's performance on her iPhone, however, and asked her to audition with Bell for
Frozen. Before they were cast, Menzel and Bell impressed the directors and producers at an early
table read; after reading the script aloud, they sang "
Wind Beneath My Wings" as a duet (since no music had been composed yet). The songwriters were also present for the table read; Anderson-Lopez said that "Lasseter was in heaven" on hearing Menzel and Bell sing in harmony and said, "Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel have to be in the movie!" Buck knew that Giaimo was the best candidate to develop the style he had in mind (drawing from the best Disney hand-drawn films of the 1950s, the Disney
Little Golden Books, and
mid-century modern design), and persuaded him to return to Disney as
Frozen art director. To create the film's look, Giaimo began pre-production research by reading about
Scandinavia and visiting the Danish-themed city of
Solvang, California (near Los Angeles). He focused on Norway because "80 percent" of the visuals that appealed to him were from that country. Disney eventually sponsored three research field trips. Animators and special-effects specialists were sent to
Jackson Hole,
Wyoming, to experience walking, running, and falling in deep snow in a variety of attire, including long skirts (which men and women both tried on); lighting and arts teams visited
Quebec City's
Ice Hotel to study how light
reflects and
refracts on snow and ice. "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. "There is a real feeling of
Lawrence of Arabia scope and scale to this". Del Vecho explained the organization of the film's animation team: "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 supervising 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." Acting coach Warner Loughlin was brought in to help the animators understand the characters they were creating. Unten carefully developed Elsa's facial expressions to bring out her fear, contrasted with Anna's fearlessness. For the look and nature of the film's
cinematography, Giaimo was influenced by
Jack Cardiff's work on
Black Narcissus (1947). He aimed for hyper-reality: "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 on
The Sound of Music was another influence on Giaimo. It was his idea that
Frozen should be produced in
CinemaScope, which was approved by Lasseter. Another issue Giaimo insisted on addressing was costumes, since he "knew from the start" that
Frozen would be a "costume film". Traditional animation integrates costume and character design and treats clothing as part of the characters, but computer-generated animation regards costume as a quasi-separate entity with its own properties and behaviors;) created digitally painted simulations of surfaces; other departments dealt with movement, rigging and weight, and thickness and lighting of textile animation. Several Disney artists and special-effects personnel traveled to Wyoming to experience walking through deep snow. Another challenge for the studio was to deliver shots of heavy and deep snow that interacted believably with the characters and had a realistic, sticky quality. to create Matterhorn, a snow-simulator software application. 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 scenes. Software engineer Alexey Stomakhin called snow "an important character in the film", In addition to 3D effects, the filmmakers used 2D artwork and drawings for specific elements and scenes which included Elsa's magic and snow sculptures and freezing fountains and floors.
Scandinavian and Sámi inspiration The setting is the fictional kingdom of Arendelle, which was based on Norway, and the film was influenced by
Scandinavian culture. trolls,
Viking ships, a
hot spring,
Fjord horses,
clothes, A
maypole is also present in the film, and
runes briefly appear in a book which Anna and Elsa's father opens to learn where the trolls live. A scene where two men argue over whether to stack firewood bark-up or bark-down refers to a perennial Norwegian debate about properly stacking firewood. The film has several elements of
Sámi culture, such as the use of reindeer for transportation and the equipment used to control them, clothing styles (the outfits of the ice cutters), and parts of the musical score. Decorations, such as those on the castle pillars and Kristoff's sled, are inspired by Sámi
duodji decorations. Disney's team visited Rørosrein, a Sámi family-owned company in the town of
Plassja that produces reindeer meat and arranges tourist events. Arendelle was inspired by
Nærøyfjord, a branch of Norway's longest fjord (
Sognefjorden), which has been listed as a
UNESCO World Heritage Site; an Oslo castle with hand-painted patterns on all four walls inspired the kingdom's castle interior. The filmmakers' trip to Norway provided information for the animators to design an aesthetic in terms of color, light, and atmosphere. According to Giaimo, they acquired three important factors from the Norway research trip: the fjords and their massive, vertical rock formations, the setting for the secluded kingdom of Arendelle; the medieval stave churches whose rustic triangular rooflines and shingles inspired the castle compound; and rosemaling folk art, whose distinctive paneling and patterns informed the film's architecture, decor, and costumes. Lopez first heard Disney Animation's pitch in Los Angeles while he was working on
The Book of Mormon; Disney's production team traveled to New York City to pitch the film in person to Anderson-Lopez, who was raising the couple's two young daughters. Lopez believes that Disney was particularly interested in his wife's story talent. The decision was easy: "Whenever Disney asks if you want to do a fairy tale musical, you say yes." Because they live in New York City, collaborating with the production team in
Burbank required two-hour-long transcontinental
videoconferences nearly every weekday for about 14 months. They recorded a demo of each song in their home studio, with both singing and Lopez
accompanying on piano, and emailed it to Burbank for discussion at the next videoconference. Lopez and Anderson-Lopez were aware of the fact that their work would be compared to that of
Alan Menken and
Howard Ashman from the Disney Renaissance era and, when they felt lost, they asked "What would Ashman do?" They wrote 25 songs for the film, and eight were included in the final version. It was announced on September 14, 2013, that Sámi musician
Frode Fjellheim's "Eatnemen Vuelie" would be the film's opening song, with elements of
joik (a traditional Sámi singing style). The music producers recruited Norwegian linguist and composer Christine Hals to assist with the lyrics for an
Old Norse song written for Elsa's coronation, and traveled to
Trondheim Most of the dialogue was recorded at the
Roy E. Disney Animation Building in Burbank under the supervision of original dialogue mixer Gabriel Guy, who also mixed the film's
sound effects. Lopez and Anderson-Lopez's
piano-vocal scores for the songs and the vocal tracks were sent to
Salem, Oregon-based Dave Metzger for arrangement and
orchestration, and Metzger orchestrated a significant portion of Beck's score. on the
Warner Bros. Pictures studio lot in Burbank by an 80-piece orchestra with 32 vocalists, including Norwegian Christine Hals. Boucher supervised the recording of Anderson-Lopez and Lopez's songs from July 22 to 24, 2013, and Stone supervised the recording of Beck's score on September 3–6 and 9–10. Boucher mixed the songs at the Eastwood stage, while Stone mixed the score at Beck's studio in
Santa Monica, California. The complete silence at the climax of the film (right after Anna freezes) was Lasseter's idea, one he "really wanted". Finding
sopranos capable of matching Menzel's warm vocal tone and three-octave vocal range in their native languages was a challenge. Rick Dempsey, the unit's senior executive, called the process of translating the film "exceptionally challenging": "It's a difficult juggling act to get the right intent of the lyrics and also have it match rhythmically to the music. And then you have to go back and adjust for lip sync! [It] ... requires a lot of patience and precision." Lopez explained that they were told by Disney to remove complex wordplay and puns from their songs to ensure that the film was easily translatable and had universally appealing lyrics. In casting the dubbed versions, Disney required native speakers in to "ensure that the film feels 'local. The
Italian version of the film received an award for best foreign dubbing worldwide. Some local TV stations and independent studios have created unofficial dubs in
Albanian,
Arabic (TV),
Karachay-Balkar,
Persian and
Tagalog. == Release ==