that he was gonna get an EGOT.

So the girls and I made pasta glue necklace

that had "EGOT" and I slipped it to the PR people.

I knew that if I had presented the pasta necklace to him

in the speech, it would have really embarrassed him

because he really doesn't like

to talk about his honors at all.

- I don't like attention.

I do this job despite the attention.

The necklace fell apart but I still,

I've got pictures of it.

I remember the "t" fell off and it just said "ego"

for awhile. [laughs]

And then I had to throw it out.

[swelling music]

[timer ticking down]

- I'm Kristen Anderson-Lopez.

- And I'm Bobby Lopez.

- And this is our process for composing animated musicals.

[sweet piano music]

I think it actually starts with talking about

why are you working on the movie.

What do you have to say?

What do these characters have to say?

And that's where everything begins,

and it really is about talking story,

and character with Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck,

and amazing animators at Walt Disney Animation.

- In the first movie we were collaborating

with the team on story, and we find a spot,

that we called Elsa's bad ass song,

which evolved into "Let it Go" as we wrote the song.

It was about Elsa going from someone

who was keeping secrets inside and then in this one moment

she transforms and allows her power to come out,

and becomes the Elsa we know and love.

In this film we already kinda knew Elsa.

- We knew that Elsa had already been accepted

by her community, but there was still the burning question,

which drove, actually creating Frozen II,

which is why does she has these powers,

and what purpose do those powers have to play?

[soft music]

We'll talk a little about our process as it relates

to "Into the Unknown," just breaking that down.

We knew that there were questions that she still had.

We need to embody that restless feeling we all have

when we know, maybe I'm not exactly where I need to be.

That we would embody that with this voice,

that is actually the Dies Irae which is used by composers

of operas and musicals for centuries.

- [chanting] Dies Irae

[dramatic music]

[soprano chanting]

And it's actually a mythical call,

usually to danger of some kind.

Bobby had this vamp that he was working on

that had this drive, that was like

[music note sounds]

- Right, that became the chorus.

Kristen said, "It's 3 a.m., she has to wake up

in the middle of the night, it has

to feel more mysterious, more 3 a.m."

And I said, "Okay what if we put it up an octave,

and what if we make it minor,

and what if we add a sixth to it, and..."

- And he started playing like this

[music note sounds]

and I was like,

♪ I can hear you. ♪

[laughs]

♪ But I won't. ♪

♪ Some look for trouble. ♪

Like it felt like a voice you would talk to at three a.m.

And then the chorus itself is actually,

tells the story of the whole movie

if you look at it from a musicology point of view.

So you have,

♪ Into the unknown, ♪

that's an octave, safe.

We know octaves,

♪ Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do ♪

Then, ♪ Into the unknown.

That's actually... - One higher.

It's a ninth.

- Stepping a toe outside of what you know,

but coming right back.

And then,

♪ Into the unknown. ♪

Is like, "whoa!"

You just flew the coop,

you just went - That's an eleventh.

- Way to an enchanted forest somewhere.

It's an eleventh.

- Which is an interval.

They strongly urge you not to write.

[laughts]

- That kinda mirrors the story of Elsa,

hearing the voice but staying safe,

stepping a toe out, and then finding herself

in this enchanted forest of transformation.

- [Elsa] ♪ Into the unknown! ♪

♪ Into the unknown! ♪

- And that then the song could become a duet

between Elsa and this voice, that first she's resisting it,

and then she gives in.

It's leading her away from everything she knows,

everything she loves,

her home, and comfort, and her queendom,

to brave this journey that's very challenging,

very dangerous, into the unknown

to find where it is that she's meant to be.

[lighthearted music]

- Again, we just try and tell the story

and we try and tell a story that really resonates

for us, and in the case of the Olaf Song,

we were feeling very like stuck in an enchanted forest,

we couldn't get out of, that we couldn't make sense of,

because these stories are hard,

certain story points will get locked,

while others are very, very in flux.

- Yeah.

- And you know there's this deadline coming

and you keep telling yourself, "Okay trust the process,

trust your collaborators,

in six months this will all be over

and it will all be solved."

Even though you don't know how to solve it then.

I was skating to try and self soothe.

I was ice skating around, and I thought,

this will all makes sense when I'm older.

That's what Olaf can sing,

and I ran to the ice skating rental guy,

and I said, "Do you have a pen and paper?"

And I would do a lap and then write a line,

and then do a lap and write a line.

And I brought it back to Bobby

who then discovered this amazing spooky, Halloween

meets samhain kind of music to put it to.

- He's got so much anxiety because he cannot process

the craziness that is going on around him in the forest

[Screams]

that the song itself is almost like a

"calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean" kind of mantra

that he's self soothing with.

- [Olaf] ♪ Cause when you're older ♪

♪ absolutely everything makes sense! ♪

[strings music]

This is fine.

[soft piano music]

- The first big song we wrote for the movie was

"The Next Right Thing," a song that Anna sings

towards the end, and it was a very daring thing

that we all agreed we would try,

because it's a song about grief.

It's a song about what do you do when your whole world

is collapsed, and you don't know what to do next,

you can't image a future.

And Anna shows this quality in the song

of realizing like you can't think about the future,

you just have to think about the narrow,

the very next right thing, take a step,

and then make another choice.

Because the grief comes in waves,

and that's what we wanted to write about.

- Right.

Anna is such a optimist, and she's usually so

all over the place, not unlike myself,

[laughs]

Kristen also had done this beautiful monologue

about how being an optimist is not a thing that you're given

it's a choice you make every day.

- Right, it's not that she magically feels happy

all the time, it's that she feels all the feelings,

she deals with all the darkness,

and it's a choice to still keep going,

even when things look like you can't.

- There are those moments when the world gives you

something that seems impossible to recover from.

I did ask Chris Buck if I could share this story.

During the press junket for Frozen I,

Chris and his wife lost their son.

Then I watched as he had to show up for work,

and show up three weeks later for the Golden Globes,

and then the Oscars, and how he just

had to keep putting one foot in front of the next,

and the courage that he showed,

dealing with the unimaginable,

and I think I wrote this lyric like in one sitting.

I was just thinking about what he must have felt like

in that moment, and I brought it to Bobby,

and he put this beautiful music to it,

and we said, "Can we put this in a Disney movie?"

And it was Chris and Jen who were like, "Yes."

Not only can we, but we must.

And so, we're really grateful to them for that.

♪ [Anna] How to rise from the floor, ♪

♪ When it's not you I'm rising for. ♪

- You know, all of that was in a soup

for this moment that we wanted to give Anna

because Anna is this human heart,

who shows us how to be human.

And Elsa is this mythical heroine

who really shows us how to be even better

than we can possibly be.

- How to find our power.

- Yeah.

[lively music]

- Part of being a boy is repressing

a certain range of emotions and vulnerability.

We wanted to show the world that it's okay

for boys to feel their feelings.

We think that it's healthy.

My journey as a person,

and getting out of my own comfort zone

has been to express my feelings

and to learn to be more romantic

to this woman who deserves it.

- Aww.

If Kristoff allows other boys to feel what they feel,

and their feelings are real,

that's something that Kristoff brings to the world.

- [Kristoff] ♪ I'm the one who sees you home ♪

♪ but now I'm lost in the woods, ♪

♪ And I don't know what path you are on. ♪

- We'd already written the bulk of the Kristoff song

and, I believe, went back and tagged on the

"reindeers are better than people" reprise to set it up.

You need to think of it like an airplane ramp,

every song needs a really clear pathway

to takeoff into singing, and that is a really thing

to get, especially with this song,

which was going to go so stylized

into the 80s, both visually and sonically.

And so the best way in was through Sven allowing us

to go to a really stylized place, and that's what we did.

- We had a blast writing,

and once we and the team discovered this moment,

and I think we knew that it had this 80s flair.

We had no inkling what Jen and Chris were gonna do

with the visuals of it because it just brought it home.

It was so over the top.

- A storyboard artist named Dan Abraham,

who is known for being really great with humor,

I think somewhere we had said a note like,

this could be shot like an 80s karaoke video.

He took that note [laughs]

and boy did he run with it!

And I think it was actually their idea

to put the reindeer chorus in,

which allowed us to go, - Which we ran with it.

- Allowed us to go, this is the kind of chicken and egging