Chatting with Frozen Filmmakers

Chatting with Frozen Filmmakers

The Oscars was last Sunday and while I didn’t watch I was following all the excitement on social media for one very special reason and that’s because almost a month ago I traveled to L.A. courtesy of Disney.  I had so many amazing opportunities to get behind the scenes peeks at some of their greatest movies and one of them was Frozen.  When we sat down with the filmmakers of Frozen the film just had two Oscar nominations.  A big accomplishment but when I saw the news that they won it was even more exciting.  I’d never felt so excited about a win before and it’s because I had the opportunity to sit down with Peter Del Vecho, Jennifer Lee & Chris Buck.  I saw how excited they were about working on this project and could hear how spoke about it from the heart.  Our Q&A started with a simple question about the success of the film.

“We joke now of course we do, but no we had no idea” Chris Buck shared.  Peter Del Vecho chimed in saying “I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of a movie where the public has made it their own.  They are driving the box office, people really embraced it.”  When Peter asked about having a highlight reel of his movies what would he add he said he loved working on this movie and it’s almost magical of how much people really feel in love with this film.  Jennifer said after a partial screening of the movie and seeing the reactions exceed their expectations she knew then this movie would be like happiness.  Chris said it was hard to pick a favorite since all your films are your children but he said this one has touched so many lives.  We chatted about how difficult it was to actually bring the script to life, Chris was working on it for a few years before being joined by Peter and finally Jennifer.  They all stated that everything came together at the right time.  At one point this film was shelved.

When discussing music in the film Jennifer said she worked closely with the songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez.  They shared there were at least twenty songs written but they couldn’t even use them all.  You can hear some of those songs on the deluxe Frozen soundtrack.  Chris also shared that the movie originally had a different start and the story of how it changed after a screening.  When I asked them about the Sing-a-long version of the film they shared that the plan wasn’t to do a sing-a-long.  Chris said he attended a screening in New York and the audience was singing.  When he got back to California and shared with the team, they got excited and the original plan was to have a sing-a-long version to be released a week before the DVD went on sale.  Peter chimed in saying even then it was supposed to only be in 200 theaters but then they started getting calls from theaters all across the country requesting it to be shown in their cities as well.  They even talked about an international version.   He also said the demand of the public is what drove that version of the film.  Unfortunately they didn’t plan on releasing the sing-a-long version on DVD (well at least at the time of our interview).

We chatted about so much more from the casting of Idina Menzel, table reads, choosing CG instead of hand drawn film.  They were so warm and welcoming and once I left that interview I knew it would be amazing if they win that Oscar, after all they worked so hard on this film to bring it to us.

One of my new blogging buddies Tori of The TV Mom filmed her groups interview with the filmmakers and you can watch that below and see if they asked different questions.  Special thanks to Connie of Misc Finds 4 U for your audio files so I could share.

Frozen has been on a whirl wind high and it’s been a great success for Disney.  The movie has even reached a billion plus dollars in box office sales.  You can read about that here.  Also check out some more behind the scenes photos from out time at the Disney Animation Studio.

You can pre-order Frozen from Amazon now

Disclosure: I was provided an all expenses paid trip to L.A. to cover the in home release of Frozen.  Any and all opinions expressed are my own.