Disney’sFrozen 2is currently the biggest animated film of all time. And it’s easy to suspect that something so widely and instantaneously accepted, the world over, appeared one day, fully formed and ready for box office and pop-cultural dominance. But that’s not how it works. Making any Disney animated feature is a years-long process full of ups and down, snowy peaks and icy valleys, and all of that drama is captured exquisitely in the new Disney+ documentary seriesInto the Unknown: Making Frozen 2.(All six episodes debut this week.)
Through six episodes, you follow the production during its last, incredibly fraught year, when everything is both up in the air and needing to be nailed downfast. It’s an exhilarating behind-the-scenes look at the film and one of the best things currently on Disney+. (You can readour review here.)
We were lucky enough to chat with directorMegan Harding, who helmed all six episodes of the series, about what it was like to be led into the secret halls of Walt Disney Animation Studios and capture the culmination of years-worth of artistry and technology. We talk about the surprises along the way, whether or not they were ever denied access, and if there will be a follow-up series based on Disney’s next animated featureRaya and the Last Dragon(now set for release in the spring of 2021).
Collider: How did this project come to life?
HARDING: We were making an ABC television special on the firstFrozen. It was very different. It was being made a year after the movie had been released and it was after it had become a big success. It was the first time I metJennifer LeeandChris BuckandPeter Del Vechoand the Lopezes. What really struck us at that time was there were all these amazing stories about howFrozencame to be. There’s a story of how the Lopezes discovered “Let it Go.” There was the story of how Elsa’s character started as one thing and became what we know it to be today.
And I remember thinking,Oh, wouldn’t it have been great if we had shot that, if we had have seen that happening, rather than just hearing about it a year or two after it had happened. And so whenFrozen 2was happening, I worked for a company called Lincoln Square Productions and we approached the animation studio and asked if they would be interested in us actually documenting the process. We started filming in December 2018, which was just a little under the last year of production, but it’s kind of when things got hotting-up. I feel like prior to that, there’d been a lot of discussions. There have been a lot of story talk. But really that final year is when the hard decisions need to be made. And you have a deadline, you have a deadline looming that is not going to move no matter what happens. So, we started shooting, it was the December story trust, 2018. And then we were pretty much at the studio, not every day, but pretty much every week and numerous days within a week after that point, right up until the very end.
Was there any talk of starting the process earlier?
HARDING: I think that we felt like this was a good marker. You know, there were still many decisions to be made. What really fascinated me was that I thought that I knew how animation was made after doing the 2014 special… but then I realized after doing this, that I really had no idea. Even though they’ve spent four years at the animation studio making the movie, so much of it really happened in the final five months. And that’s always the way it is. And it doesn’t really matter before then. It always ends up being that way. Because in animation, unlike live-action, you may just throw things out and start from scratch. So we always just felt like that year was really a good, solid timing device, I guess.
One of the more striking elements of the documentary series is that you go into the filmmakers’ homes, you get to know them on an incredibly personal level. Was that always part of the design of the series?
HARDING: The intention was always to be more than a behind-the-scenes A-to-Z of making an animated movie, although that forms part of it as well. You will learn more about making an animated movie. But the heart always had to be that these are people that work in this extraordinary place, that put their heart and soul and their personal lives up on the screen to bring these stories to life. With Chris Buck, we weren’t going to go there unless he wanted to go there. Because I felt that, because Ryder exists in this movie, it’s still about the making ofFrozen 2. But his story is very much part of how and whyFrozen 2is the way it is. You know, we were lucky that Chris felt comfortable enough and was open enough to share the story of Ryder with us and to make it a part of this series.
You talk about being surprised. What was the biggest surprise for you?
HARDING: There was constant surprises. Every day brought surprises. It was so funny, we would have an advanced schedule, so we basically would know what was being planned, what scenes are going to be worked on, you know, so we could try and figure out what would be the best moment for us to capture. But literally every single time I’d walk into the studio and that schedule would be thrown out the window and then it would be something brand new and it would be like, “Okay, I guess we’re doing this today.” But to answer your question, I just think what was really surprising … you’ve seen the first three episodes, is that correct?
Yes, just the first three.
HARDING: Well, the biggest surprise to me is the honesty and openness of the creative team to let us go along for the ride. And that really came home to me, which you’ll see in Episode 4, when you finally get to see it on Friday. It’s the audience preview. So it’s the first time kids are seeing the movie. It happened June of last year. There was not a lot of time. There was a lot of pressure on this screening, because there’s still time to make changes if they’re necessary, but there’s not alotof time. If Jen and Chris hadn’t actually made the right decisions up to this point in the last couple of years, it was not going to go well. And so, just the amount of pressure that this team was under, but yet still remained in pretty good humor by in large, I found incredibly inspiring. Their openness to us to be there and be a part of that was also incredibly humbling because it was a very vulnerable moment for them. No doubt about that.
Was there anything you were surprised they allowed to be in the documentary? Did you ever shoot something and immediate think,There’s no way this is going to be in the final version.
HARDING: That never happened. There was only one moment that they asked us to leave the room. You’ll see that in Episode 4, we left it in. And we discuss it basically. By the time we were editing, I was not surprised because I knew that they were pretty fearless about it and had been on-board to make this an honest look. We’d all agreed that that’s what we wanted to make. We didn’t want to make a DVD extra. This had to be something different than that. And the only way to make that possible would be to be open about showing what the process is really like, and not just the A-to-Z but also the personal investment and creative struggle that goes along with that.
So much of the first three episodes hinges around the development of “Show Yourself,” including footage with the Lopezes in their apartment in New York. How did you coordinate that, and were you surprised that one song could take up so much energy?
HARDING: I’m going to backtrack a little bit. I’m actually based in New York and Lincoln Square is based in New York. We were flying out to LA to shoot most of it. And when we were shooting the Lopezes, we would have one of our local crews there. Sometimes I was in New York and sometimes I was in LA. Sometimes we only had one side of the conversation and we were just using a recording of the teleconferencing. So it was a mix of everything.
When we sat down to figure out what it was that we wanted to follow, because, making an animation is a vast enterprise. There were a lot of people working on the movie at the same time, doing different things. We could never shoot all of that.
So we had to try and pinpoint what we believed would be major storylines. “Show Yourself” is this really important centerpiece in Elsa’s storyline. It’s the combination of her journey across the two films. We figured that even if it came together really smoothly, it would still be something interesting. Of course, we didn’t know that it was really on the chopping block in February, but it kind of was. And we didn’t know that when we were choosing that as a storyline to follow, we didn’t know where was going to go. And we were lucky in terms of that, because you get to see those really true conversations that need to happen between the directors and the songwriters in order to actually save that song.
Have you started work on theRaya and the Last Dragondocumentary series for Disney+?
