Frozen Heart Dj Funny Bad Kingdom
ED HOOKS is the author of Acting for Animators 
DISNEY'S FROZEN WILL SOON MERIT its own chapter in the entertainment industry Big Book. The 2014 Oscar winner for best animated feature has earned over US$1 billion at the box office, currently the second highest-grossing animated feature in history, behind Toy Story 3. The movie's phenomenal financial success has obscured under-the-hood examination of its performance engine. As an acting teacher, I am an artistic purist; grosses and popularity awards don't mean much to me. My standard of measurement is the emotional impact a movie has on its audience and its elegance as a work of art. Frozen is beautiful to see, fun to sing along with and is a modern day marketing marvel, but the script has structural and performance issues that are worth examining because they impact directly on acting.
In a nutshell, Frozen tells the story of a fairy tale princess named Anna who must find her runaway, freshly crowned, ice-and-snow-controlling queen sister, Elsa, and in the process rescue the kingdom of Arendelle from perpetual winter. Along the way, she accumulates and interacts with a cast of characters that are, by turns, funny, romantic and dangerous. In the end, Anna and Elsa learn the value of selfless love and form a new lifetime sisterly bond as a result.
Introduction: Acting and Story are joined at the hip
Even the most talented animator can work only with the character that is given to him or her by the writer(s). If a character is not fleshed out in the production script, it is not the animator's job to revise or amplify. In the case of Frozen, there are serious weaknesses regarding Hans of the Southern Isles, and the net result is that Hans gives an under-developed and often notably weak performance. In order for us to look specifically at the acting issues, therefore, we must first point to the structural flaws that caused them.
According to voice actress Idina Menzel, Elsa was originally conceived to be the antagonist, but that idea got rejected along the way. Elsa was moved aside, leaving biblical-level snow and ice as Anna's primary obstacle. The antagonist slot in the narrative was ultimately assigned to Hans of the Southern Isle. The problem with that decision is that Hans does not reveal himself to be the villain until late in the third act, during the fireside scene with Anna. There is no foreshadowing for the revelation, nothing for the audience to refer to. Therefore, the movie as a whole is left with a structural dysfunction that character animation cannot fix.
A second structural weakness is that, while Frozen is technically Anna's story, Elsa is the character that experiences the most interesting and compelling changes. Anna is pretty much the same lovely, awkward and self-effacing girl at the end as she was at the beginning, just a little older. Elsa, on the other hand, learns how to harness her own inner powers and is transformed as a person, a human.
PERFORMANCE: HANS OF THE SOUTHERN ISLES
Hans's Act 3 fireside scene with Anna establishes that he is – and has been all along — a full-stop sociopath, a cold-blooded manipulative murderer. That means that Hans has known from the start what he has been up to. He had a plan in place the first time we met him, early in the story, during Elsa's coronation. The script, however, does not include foreshadowing for Hans. If Frozen was a stage play or live-action movie, a good actor would identify the character's objectives during rehearsal and then structure his performance so as to steadily pursue that objective during the course of the story.
In scene after scene in Frozen, however, Hans is a blank slate, a mental rag doll. There were opportunities galore for the animator to "animate the thought," to capture at least a reflective shadow of Hans's plan, but the opportunities were left untapped by the script. Imagine watching the TV show Dexter without knowing up front that the lead character is a sociopath pretending to be a regular, normal person. Imagine how it would have been if you had not known Hannibal Lecter was a cannibal until the third act. Hans of the Southern Isle had the potential to blow the seats in the cinema auditoriums off their braces, but he was unfortunately not developed effectively.
Frozen Scene-by-Scene Analysis
With that preface, let's take a close look at a few sequences from the movie, deconstructing them for performance. Timing references are taken from the iTunes download version of Frozen. They might be different on the DVD/Blu-ray release.
Note Hans's demeanor in this sequence. There does not appear to be a devious thought in his head, only sincere concern for Anna's safety. Re-wind a bit to Hans's first entrance in the movie (the sequence with him and Anna playfully tumbling around in the rowboat). No indication of any ulterior motives. Also, watch Hans in the coronation sequence (25:44), when Anna leads him by the hand to get Elsa's blessings on their prospective marriage. Again, Hans is mentally a blank slate. In order for the animator to deliver a strong performance for Hans, the character's criminal objective would have to be taken into account because everything that happens, including all of this surprising ice and snow, will cause him to adjust the actions he is taking in pursuit of that objective. If we freeze frame Hans at any point before Act III and ask him, "What are you doing?" he would not have a theatrically valid answer.
Regarding this particular acting lesson, which is base line for character animators, Hans might answer at various times, "I'm confused," "I'm excited," "I'm worried," etc. That may be true, but those are emotional states and are not theatrically valid answers. Acting is doing. If a character is not doing anything to achieve a definable and provable objective, he is not acting. Emotion tends to lead to action.
Kristoff and Anna talk. (40:35 To 41:53) And talk. And talk. There is no acting at all in this entire sequence, just some bickering. Maybe the idea was to set up a kind of Bogart and Hepburn African Queen relationship, but it doesn't work. Kristoff criticizes her for agreeing to marry Hans after knowing him such a short time. His advice on the subject is unsolicited and unnecessary, and we also learn nothing new about Anna's character during the exchange. The sequence is an interlude, not a scene. What the characters are doing is not correlated with any definable objective.
Anna tries in vain to climb North Mountain. (51:29) The gag is that she is slipping and sliding and making no progress. Although this is not world-class acting, the sequence is theatrically valid for her character because she has an objective, an action and an obstacle.
"BUT, ED, THIS IS ANIMATION!"
Animation may be able to take liberties with the laws of physics, but storytelling basics are the same for animation and live action. The audience and the actors pretend together in a successful theatrical transaction. They will go anywhere the storyteller wants them to go in order to do the pretending, but the rules must be made clear up front, and you cannot change them mid-story. When you change the rules, it amounts to aesthetically pulling the rug out from underneath your audience. In the case of Sven, the audience arrives at the screening knowing that, in some countries, reindeer are food for humans, cows with antlers. If the storytellers had wanted Sven to fly like Superman, the audience would have gone along with it if he was flying when he first appears. It would not work, however, to have him take flight half way up North Mountain in Act II.
In Frozen, Sven starts thinking like a human when the plot needs for him to, and the device was not set up properly. Pixar did this with Merida's horse in Brave, endowing him with an opportunistic human brain. Remember the scene in which Merida rides out into the woods to meet the witch? Look at it again more closely. The horse is the one that makes the decision to see the witch, not Merida. That is a major structural flaw in that movie. Merida should have made her own choices and then been responsible for them. The horse's human brain let her off the hook. It is not okay to justify this kind of thing on the grounds that, "This is animation!" Doesn't matter that it is animation. It is a violation of basic storytelling guidelines.
Anna passes out in Kristoff's arms. (01:08:33) Kristoff now has a fresh objective, namely to save Anna's life. That is when Grandpa troll provides what amounts to a videogame cutscene moment: "Anna, your life is in danger. There is ice in your heart, put there by your sister. If not removed, the solid ice will make you freeze forever. …only the act of true love can thaw the frozen heart." Once again, this is a sequence that is mainly expository. A basic rule of screenwriting as well as acting is: "Show; don't tell."
A true love's kiss… (01:15:00) Note that the audience is still being misled about Hans's motives, up until the moment when his lips almost meet Anna's. Then, suddenly, Hans does a 180 degree Jekyll & Hyde-character reversal and admits to being a murderous sociopath. The transition is not even close to being credible because there has been no foreshadowing. "If only there was someone out there who loved you…" Frozen has only fifteen more minutes before final credits, and this is the first overt appearance of a recognizable villain?
Sven the reindeer conveniently develops a human brain again and urges Kristoff to return to Arendelle. (01:19:00) A stronger choice would be to let Kristoff introspect about his feelings for Anna and make his own decision to go back to Arendelle. As was the case when Elsa created the snow monster earlier, Sven's human brain lets Kristoff off the hook.
Kristoff's objective is to save Anna. (01:19:30) Action in pursuit of that objective is to get to Arendelle in a hurry, before she turns totally to ice. Conflict is with situation. The sequence is theatrically valid.
Anna sacrifices her life for that of her sister. (01:26:00) Then Elsa's tears melt Anna's frozen heart, bringing her back to life. These events work theatrically and emotionally. Actions, objectives and obstacles are clear. Actions are dominant over words. We see what the characters do theatrically, which is cathartic and satisfying.
CONCLUSION: A FEW NOTES ABOUT MOOD AND THE 'ILLUSION OF LIFE'
A widely held misconception among animators is that if they can endow their character with emotion and an illusion of life, that equates to good acting.
It is not enough to endow a character with an illusion of life. Back in Frank and Ollie's day, that might have been sufficient because the skill was revolutionary, but it is not enough in 2014. We now know that there is a difference between theatrical reality and regular reality. In regular reality, you show one hundred percent of everything. What you see at the mall and supermarket is regular reality. You could have an entire cast of characters endowed with an illusion of life, and if they were only shopping at the supermarket, you would bore the audience. Theatrical reality has structure and is selective, showing only the parts of reality that are necessary for telling the story and illuminating character.
There is a widely held misconception among animators that, if they can endow their character with emotion and an illusion of life, that equates to good acting. The fact is that mood is not acting at all, and emotion alone has zero theatrical value. There are sequences in Frozen during which Anna or Elsa is alone and depressed, very sad (see 10:40, end of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?"). Those are moments in time, expertly animated, but they are only that. As a character animator, you do not want to hang your acting hat on a moment during which the audience is feeling sorry for your character. Yes, the audience can empathize with a character being sad but, in life, emotion tends to lead to action. The longer the mood and negative behavior persist, the further removed will be the possibility of the audience feeling empathy.
In terms of her character arc, Anna only partially achieves her stated objective. She does indeed find her sister, and she does try to talk Elsa into returning to Arendelle—but she is unsuccessful. Elsa's character transformation happens because Anna turns into a piece of ice, the implication being that she is dead. Elsa killed Anna and is overcome with grief.
It is Elsa's remorse and bitter tears over her own shortcomings that bring Anna back from the dead. In my view, Frozen would have worked better artistically if Anna and Elsa had been given free reign to go at one another without snow monsters or psychopaths getting in the way. The audience would have learned that, ultimately, we humans must not depend upon magic in order to survive. We must work it out ourselves.
Source: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/disneys-frozen-the-acting-and-performance-analysis-97605.html
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