Script To Screen: “Frozen”

A scene from the 2013 animated movie Frozen, screenplay by Jennifer Lee, inspired by the story “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen, story by Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee & Shane Morris, additional story by Dean Wellins.

Plot Summary: Fearless optimist Anna teams up with Kristoff in an epic journey, encountering Everest-like conditions, and a hilarious snowman named Olaf in a race to find Anna’s sister Elsa, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.

Here Elsa’s secret is exposed.

Here is the movie version of the scene:

This represents a major plot point. Notice how quickly the plot twist occurs: The revelation, then Anna’s choice. Also, note how visual the scene is. Both are key to good cinema.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

Comment Archive