A few weeks ago, I had the chance to see the new featurette Olaf’s Frozen Adventure! The featurette will play in front of the new Pixar movie Coco, just in time to get you into the holiday spirit. Pixar is known for releasing shorts in front of their movies but this one is special for two reasons- it’s the first time that a Walt Disney Animation Studios “short” is running in front of a Pixar film {typically it’s a Pixar short}, and it’s also much longer than a short at 22 minutes, which is why it’s actually a featurette!
Everyone loves Olaf, and this featurette brings us back to Arendelle to see him go on an adventure in order to bring Anna and Elsa a holiday tradition. After being separated for so long, the sisters realize they don’t have any on their own and Olaf takes it upon himself to find the best traditions in the kingdom! Of course, it’s never quite that easy.
During the #PixarCocoEvent, I had the opportunity to sit down with Directors Stevie Wermers-Skelton & Kevin Deters, Producer Roy Conli and Songwriters Elyssa Samsel & Kate Anderson to learn a little bit more about the production process for the featurette. Below are some fun facts that I learned about this new featurette which is sure to be a new holiday tradition!
There are lots of goats. Inspired by a Scandinavian tradition called Julbock, there are several goats in the short, including on Anna’s dress. The tradition of Julbock dates back hundreds of years but is still carried on today, and involves making goats out of straw and tying ribbons around them.
Another real-life tradition that inspired the featurette was the Yule Bell, which is used in many Scandinavian countries on Christmas Eve, when it’s rung to signify that it’s time to begin Christmas Eve festivities!
There are four new songs featured, and they were written by Songwriters Elyssa Samsel & Kate Anderson. They felt a lot of pressure because of how amazing the soundtrack for Frozen was. To prepare, they tried to live in the world of Frozen as much as they could.
Elyssa makes a cameo in the song “That Time of Year” as the kittens! Other cameos include Director Stevie Wermers-Skelton as the mother of the “candy cane kid”, the candy cane kid himself who is Director Kevin Deters’s son, and songwriter Kate Anderson as the cookie lady.
At first, it was a challenge to center the story around Olaf. It was the only thing {besides a holiday theme} that the studio asked for, so they had to do it, but because he was designed as a sidekick, he was sort of simplistic. He doesn’t get mad and he doesn’t get upset, so it was hard to dial into him enough to create a whole adventure for him. It sort of clicked once they started thinking of him as a child, which is where a lot of the emotion started to come into play.
While the featurette is all about finding traditions, it’s mainly focused on family. Even with the traditions, it’s more about how they relate to our families. When doing research, they discovered that there are winter holidays throughout the world, and all are different ways that families get together.
On that note, the the holidays and traditions featured don’t just relate to Christmas.
We tried to embrace Frozen as an all-inclusive universe- it’s inspired by Norway but it’s fiction, and welcome to people of all faiths. We tried to respect that and maintain that. We imagined Arendelle as a place with a little bit of everything in it.
-Director Kevin Deters
There’s a scene in which Olaf imagines himself singing as a knitted sweater, which was inspired in part by the ugly sweater parties they have at Disney. The scene is more like stop motion animation than CGI and each thread was hand-painted for each individual frame.
So what did I think? Olaf’s Frozen Adventure is such a fun family event. It’s a great way to revisit our favorite friends from Arendelle, but it stands on it’s own, too. It brings home that while the holidays are magical, it’s because of the time spent together with our loved ones, and not the actual traditions themselves. It’s important to remember the importance of being with family, especially this time of year but really any time.
There was a lot of emotion in such a short adventure- I found myself both laughing out loud and crying in just 22 minutes. Each character felt like themselves and not like an abbreviated version, so it was nice to kind of take a peek in on what our favorite characters might be up to during their first holiday season after the events of Frozen. This featurette is a must-see!
Luckily, you don’t have to wait long to see it- Olaf’s Frozen Adventure will be playing in front of Disney Pixar’s Coco starting tomorrow, November 22nd! Be sure to grab your tickets now!
[…] Whether you’ve seen it already and just can’t get enough of it or you missed it, be sure to tune in Thursday to see Olaf’s Frozen Adventure! It makes for a great family movie night, especially for the holidays- you can read my full review here! […]