When doing casting for an animated film, it is important to pick who you want to voice your characters. Lately it seems as though there has been a huge push to cast stars to voice animated characters. Though a possible way to sell a film, sometimes casting stars in animated features detracts from the overall value of the film. When I watch an animated film, I enjoy not being able to recognize the voice of an actor, for then I can suspend disbelief entirely and really put myself into the world of the film. Immersing yourself the world of a film is much harder to do in an animated film. Characters do not completely resemble real people and the world does not look like our world as we know it. Stories told in animated films often involve fantastical elements such as magic and talking animals. It can be hard enough to enter the world of an animated film without a recognizable voice that drags you back to the real world.
One of the best examples of a wonderful choice for a voice actor is Jodi Benson. Benson voiced Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Her beautiful speaking and singing voice add a lot to her character. Her voice sounds soft and young which fits the character perfectly. The Little Mermaid was Benson’s first time acting in an animated feature. Her voice was fresh, new, and unrecognizable. No face could be put to the voice, so it made the role of Ariel seem more realistic.
Lately, Disney has strayed away from using the voices of relatively unknown actors, which has decreased the quality of their films. The most recent example of this is the use of Idina Menzel to voice Elsa in the film, Frozen. Idina Menzel has an incredible voice. She is a wonderful performer and actress on Broadway, but I don’t think that her voice fits the style of a Disney princess movie. Her voice was too powerful for the role and definitely too recognizable. Her voice didn’t match the timbre and styles of the other characters in the film which was fairly distracting. Her voice was also very recognizable. All I could think as I watched the film was that Elsa should be painted green and wearing a witch hat. Her strong voice distracted me from the character Elsa, and ensured that all I could think about when Idina Menzel was singing was Wicked.
I’m not saying that studios shouldn’t cast stars as these characters because sometimes stars may have a voice that truly fits the role. For example, Matthew Broderick voices adult Simba in The Lion King. I cannot tell that it is Matthew Broderick, however, which allows me to suspend my disbelief and really get into the movie. It is as if Simba has his own voice with its own tone quality and timbre.
I suggest that studios be very careful when they cast voices in animated movies, for though casting a star may help to sell a film, it can take the audience out of a movie and make it less effective.
A common technique used to create conflict, especially in children’s film, is killing off the protagonist’s parents. This happens in many superhero films and Disney movies, including The Lion King, Frozen, Batman, and Superman.
This technique is used for many reasons. For one, it isolates the protagonist. They must now navigate in an unfamiliar world and no longer have a support system. The protagonist must not only overcome the grief of losing a parent, but also solve their own problems as opposed to getting the answers from someone who knows more than they do.
Though killing off a protagonist’s parent does create conflict within a film, I would like to pose a question. As opposed to killing off a parent, is it more effective to include a flawed parent whose actions are toxic to their child?
Including an estranged parent is a more effective way to create both internal and external conflict in any plot. Often times an estranged family member will have chosen something over or instead of the protagonist. Though the family member is still present, the protagonist is in a constant state of doubt as to whether or not the family member actually cares about them. This creates a much deeper internal conflict for the protagonist. When a parent dies, often times a protagonist knows that they were loved before the parent’s death. It is obvious that the parents did not choose death over their child. However, when parents choose as drugs, money, or their own selfish wants over their child, the conflict becomes more intense. Keeping an estranged parent also helps to create character vs. character conflict. The protagonist must not only struggle through internal conflict, but also stand up to their parent or family member and confront them.
In Million Dollar Baby, Maggie’s parents don’t care about her health or her dreams, but only the money she will make from boxing. This takes a toll on her and causes her distress throughout the film. Not only does she not have the support system that she needs to be successful, but she is also taken advantage of by her family, making it clear that they only associate with her for the money.
In What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Gilbert’s mom, Bonnie, spends her time wasting away in front of the television and letting herself be overcome by her misery. Gilbert is forced to be the man of the household and take care of his siblings. This puts him under a great deal of stress and pressure and it frustrates him to see his mother not doing anything to help her family or herself.
Although many children’s films use the technique of killing off the parent in order create conflict for the protagonist, it is much more effective to write a movie with an estranged parent, creating greater internal and interpersonal drama within the film.
My most recent artist obsession has become Timeflies Tuesday. They are unique and I love listening to their music. Recently they came out with a youtube video called "Let it Go," it is a cover of the song from Frozen, however has it's own spin on it. Cal, the lead singer pulls a Disney movie out of a hat and has to incorporate it into the song. It is smart, creative and super catchy. Not only was the song very well done, but so were some of the camera shots. There were extreme close ups of guitars and drums that were sick! They were perfectly in focus and you could see the string vibrate while some powder fell off of the strings. The editing was awesome and flowed. The combination of the amazing song and the camera shots made this music video very much worth watching. I recommend taking a look(especially my fellow Frozen fans out there)
Over spring break, I finally got around to seeing one of the most popular films of 2013: Disney's animated Frozen. Like a majority of the audience, I absolutely adored the film. I thought the characters were simply adorable. Olaf was the cutest snowman I've ever seen! The music also made the film entertaining and likable. Despite Frozen's overwhelming popularity, I was left feeling a bit empty. Throughout the film I kept waiting for something more to happen, and it left something to be desired. The plot was based on the past and Elsa's secret powers. I was also left a bit confused by a few aspects. The Screen Junkie video below perfectly addresses some of those confusions. While I don't necessarily agree with everything in the video, I must admit it's pretty creative and hilarious.
I recently watched Frozen for the first time (I know I'm behind on the times I'm sorry). Although I found the songs catchy and the characters endearing something seemed to be lacking for me. There wasn't that in depth of a story. For some reason it felt to me like things happened too fast. Christoph complains that Anna is going to marry someone she just met and then shortly after is in love with her and wants to marry her. There wasn't enough time for me to accept that character development. I also was disappointed with the lack of involvement of the two main characters Elsa and Anna. I felt like these two were playing minor roles. The movie focused more around the background characters that were there for pure entertainment purposes and did not particularly move the story forward such as Ol. Don't get me wrong, I loved Olaf as a character but I felt like he took away from the story that Disney was trying to tell. I also think a lot more could have been done with this story. The ending felt rushed and cliche even though the world was saved by true love of a sister as opposed to a significant other. It still felt a little forced. Perhaps I was just expecting it to be so much more than it was because of all the hype I'm not sure. But I don't know that I would agree with people who say Frozen is the best Disney movie. I definitely think the movie was beautifully done with catchy songs and a few interesting subtle risks taken by Disney. However I found the story lacking a little bit. It's not one of the Disney movies that I could watch over and over again. Maybe once in a while with my baby cousins but not repeatedly on my own like I would with other movies.
I have recently noticed within a couple of different movies that people talk more about the supporting characters than the main characters that the story is placed around. The most recent movie I have noticed this in was the Disney animation film Frozen.
I was watching Frozen for the seventeenth time with roommate and she stated that she really just watches the movie for Olaf, who is the snowman in the movie. Every single time I have seen this movie I fall more and more in love with him. He is just so funny and entertaining, to be honest I really watch the movie for him as well. There are also other supporting characters like Kristoff and Sven who just make the movie amazing. They add so much to the film. Without them the film would be a good story, but very little entertainment. When you search the best scenes from Frozen, the majority of the clips that are chosen contain these three supporting characters. Here is proof!
The same thing with the Despicable Me movies, both the first one and the second one. While I love the movies as a whole I really watch the movies for the minions and the three little girls they are adorable! After watching the second movie I realized that they really created it around the minions. There was a lot action from the minions and the little girls.
So with all that being said there are many movies that I have seen where the supporting characters are better then the actual main characters. Supporting characters are my favorite characters!
Having seen Disney's Frozen three times in the week and a half that it has been out in theaters, I am very clearly obsessed. But instead of raving over how many boundaries it broke in the Disney sphere, I'm focusing this post on the short that proceeds: Get a Horse! As I mentioned in my last post, although Frozen is the first Disney film directed by a women, Jennifer Lee is one of two directors. The second director is a man. However, Lauren MacMullan of Get a Horse! is the first woman to single handedly direct a Disney production. Now let's be honest, Disney short films have a strong reputation of being wonderful. And in my opinion, MacMullan held her own.
My favorite part of Get a Horse! is that it reminded me a lot of one of my favorite movies, The Purple Rose of Cairo. In the Woody Allen romantic comedy set in the 30s, Jeff Daniels plays a movie character that walks out of the screen and into the real world. Similar to this concept, Micky Mouse breaks through the movie screen in Get a Horse! and plays between the two worlds.
Both pieces of work use color to differentiate between the worlds. I remember loving the idea of a character from a black and white film emerging into the colorful real world when I first saw the movie. Get a Horse! also did a great job contrasting the black and white screen with the colorful real world as a means to tell the story. MacMullan took it even further though when Mickey breaks through the screen and into the real world. He actually breaks the screen, ripping a hole in it. And through that hole, we can see the world inside the screen in color. I thought the idea was a very clever add on to the use of color in The Purple Rose of Cairo.
On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the newest Disney animated film Frozen will be released in theaters. It will be the third movie I see in theaters this break, after Catching Fire (which was amazing) and Thor: The Dark World (which I hope will be amazing). But still, I have decided it is worth becoming broke over. And here is why.
For the first time in history, a woman is directing an animated Disney feature. Screenwriter Jennifer Lee is doing the honors and I must say, it sounds like she did a killer job. Animation has a male-dominated industry for decades and this is the start of an era of female creative leadership. However, animation does not differ that much from the overall Hollywood breakdown of directors by gender.
One of the major perks of a female director is the perspective that she can add to the story and animation. Frozen is a Disney rendition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Snow Queen. The story revolves around the struggles between two princess sister, Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) and Elsa (voice by Idena Menzel) in a fictional Nordic kingdom. With Lee's perspective impacting the sister conflict, reviews claim the sister relationship is relatable. Lee's goal was to humanize Anna and I'm excited to find out how she tried to do it.
I'm about as big a Disney fan as you can get. My first year of college, I brought my entire Disney VHS collection for my viewing pleasure. I've read books analyzing Disney's current business model, articles exposing Disney as an evil corporation (which I don't agree with), and biographies on Walt himself. Whether you, like Disney or hate Disney, I feel like they've earned some respect at the very least.
In recent years, I've become especially intrigued by Disney Animation Studios. After Disney's decision to dissolve their hand-drawn animation studios, and then subsequent re-instate them under the tutelage of John Lasseter and Bob Iger, Disney has produced some good movies. The Princess and the Frog was at least commendable, and a solid return for the studio. They followed up with "Tangled", a computer generated film which was critically acclaimed and became the 19th highest grossing animated film. That was followed by another computer generated film, "Wreck it Ralph", which was indisputably enjoyable. These three films, perhaps specifically "Wreck it Ralph" and "Tangled", were solid additions to the classic Disney canon, and a great shift from the films that come out during the bulk of the first decade of the 21st century.
I think Disney is headed in the right direction with their animation, especially given the apparent decrease in Pixar quality (even though Brave and Monsters University had their own merits) (Also, Cars 2 should be destroyed). That's why I've been so excited for full trailer for Disney's new animated film, "Frozen". The trailer was released on Thursday, and to be totally fair, I was underwhelmed.
The trailer although mildly engaging, seemed juvenile at times, relying largely on comedic relief from the Olaf character, the snowman. Following the "Wreck it Ralph" trailer, which is spectacular, this trailer seemed very two dimensional, and somewhat devoid of any emotional depth, save the blatant emotional hand-holding when Olaf says, "Some people are worth melting for".
To be fair though, I remember having a similar feeling when the "Tangled" trailer was released. That seemed to ignore a large amount of the depth and charm that the movie had, exchanged for cheap laughs.
These reductive tendencies in Disney trailers is perhaps a ploy to engage their main demographic, children. Most of the things that a person like myself would find exciting about the movie may go over the heads of their target demographic. The trailer, perhaps, is not indicative of the true movie quality.
The point is, even though this trailer was "eh" at very best, I'm still excited for the film, given the recent success of Disney Animation.
