Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Disney FROZEN fan. Last year, I was able to interview Directors Chis Buck & Jennifer Lee for the film. It was an incredible experience.
I can’t believe that I was able to interview them again last week for the upcoming Disney FROZEN FEVER short that can only be seen at the CINDERELLA movie starting on March 13th. It is the only way to see the next adventure of Anna, Elsa, and Olaf.
Disney invited me to Los Angeles on an all-expenses paid press trip, in exchange for my coverage. All opinions are my own.
Interview with Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee, Directors of FROZEN FEVER
Directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee are amazing people to talk with. They have such a passion for FROZEN and they work so well together. They seem to really work well together, almost to the point of finishing the sentences of each other.
In FROZEN FEVER, there is a scene with Elsa waking up Anna. It is just as hilarious as in FROZEN with Anna’s hair a mess and droll coming out of her mouth! I couldn’t resist asking about it!
Q: It seems like you revisited, Ana waking up with that messed up hair! Was there a reason? Was it something that a lot of people enjoyed that scene that you just had to add it?
JENNIFER LEE: I have to say, it was something. Growing up, it always looked at how, you know, in a lot of these fairy tales, they do like to show the lead female character waking up! And she always wakes up, like, ahhh! You know, with birds waiting for her and stuff. And I always, you know, woke up with a rat’s nest on my head. Originally we loved it. In this one what we really loved was there was the original film where Anna you know, Elsa… And we wanted to… Now that Elsa’s free to do that, we wanted to flip it. But of course we had to do the hair again, because that’s how she sleeps. So. So it was more just showing that the dynamic was now. They were back to that place where they could be playful and, and…CHRIS BUCK: There’s even a little bit of drool
JENNIFER LEE: He drooled. I didn’t. He drooled, so that was for him.
CHRIS BUCK: That’s funny.
I had no idea that there was such meaning behind this funny scene!
Q: In the Frozen Fever short, Elsa sneezing is the cutest thing ever. How’d you come up with that idea? Or who came up with the idea of her sneezing and snowmen come out?
JENNIFER LEE: We have this, uh… One of our story artists, he was one of the head story artist on Frozen Fever… I mean Frozen itself. And we were brainstorming all, whatever could be, you know. Blue sky. Anything. And, um, we kept saying It would be nice to focus on Elsa more, What’s she like now? I mean, we end the film. We had this tragic character. We end the film, she’s free, but we don’t know. And, but we’d love to play with her magic in a different way, and he just said what if she’s a cold, and the cold wreaks havoc. And we, we just went crazy. It got ridiculous at some points.
CHRIS BUCK : Some of the ideas started with…you know, she would have this stuff, but then suddenly, like, spikes would show up in Arendelle? And we’re, like, no, we did that before in the last one…
JENNIFER LEE: But even things like…Is it puff? Create something else. And a sneeze does this, and blowing your nose does that. Like, we had all of these crazy… Does she know? Does she not know? So there were, You know, still hours of what do we do? What if? But it was the idea itself was so simple, and fun. We just…You felt it when, when he suggested it. We all just went yes. So.
CHRIS BUCK: And it gave us license to have fun with Elsa.
JENNIFER LEE: Yeah. Which was nice.
You’ll love the little mini-Olfa snowmen in FROZEN FEVER and so will your kids! We also heard that there WILL be more FROZEN merchandise available, including these little guys. Seems they learned their lesson the last time around! 🙂
Q: What’s next for Frozen? (This is the question ALL of us want to know, right?!)
CHRIS BUCK: We’re kind of in that place of, of, uh, got to stop for second and then dream again. We don’t know what we’re gonna come up with. Cause we’re also involved with thing, like, at the parks and all that…
And, you know, there’s the Frozen theme that’s at California Adventure. We’re very Frozen busy. But the nice thing is is that they’re actually asking us… ‘cause sometimes in the past it’s been, you know, you do the movie and it, it, it’s kind of taken away, and, and they do their thing, uh, throughout the company without any advice from us. And it’s always nice to be asked because we know these character so well.
And there are things that, uh, uh, we tried, but didn’t work with our characters, so it’s always nice to give them that heads up. Like, don’t, don’t go down that road, ‘cause it just gets kinda, kinda sticky. So…
We just feel very, very busy with a lot of it. So we’ll, we’ll see what’s next.
Learn more about why FROZEN was set in an area like Norway and how it was drawn from and inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s story.
JENNIFER LEE: Yeah. I mean, we knew the Snow Queen is very, uh, was a compelling idea, but, you know, in the, in the, in the book she’s a… She’s evil, and you know nothing about her. She’s very one dimensional, and, and represents evil, and, and, uh, and in the original, uh, tonally, though, here’s a lot of similarity. And there’s a, the theme… We found the theme through the book. The theme and in the book it’s sort of, um, uh, love versus negativity. But we translated that in more extreme to literally to fear. So that was… That came from the book, and, and, um, and then it was just a lot more about, uh, sort of this, the setting, and, and things. But, but it’s a very different kind of a story, and, um, one that is beautiful in prose. But, you know. It’s, it’s not necessarily the most cinematic in terms of structure and, and things like that. So we wanted to have really three dimensional characters, and, and go deep into them. So we, we made it our own.
What a delight to speak with such talented individuals. We even got a group picture taken with them.
Watch the FROZEN FEVER Short Trailer! This 6-7 minute Disney short can only be seen at the Disney CINDERELLA movies starting on March 13th.
Check out all of our CINDERELLA coverage too!
CINDERELLA opens in theaters March 13, 2015!
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