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Rated: 5.00/5 | Votes: 4 | Views: 171 |Submitted: 06/08/09

Adam Green Talks FROZEN

By Heather Wixson

Writer/Director Adam Green has taken a lot of risks throughout his career.  His latest film, FROZEN, may prove to be the biggest risk of them all. FROZEN centers around three friends who take a doomed trip up a ski lift which ends up leaving them stranded 50 feet in the air due to a lift operator error.  The trio are left to struggle not only against the elements but against themselves while they figure out a way to survive. 

FROZEN stars Shawn Ashmore (THE X-MEN Trilogy, THE RUINS), Emma Bell (“The Bedford Diaries”) and Kevin Zegers (DAWN OF THE DEAD, WRONG TURN).

“The thing with FROZEN is that the less you know about the movie going into it, the better,” explained Green. “It’s a really basic premise and honestly, when you hear it, either you’re in or you’re out. It’s a real-life dramatic horror movie. It’s not over the top, it’s not like HATCHET.  FROZEN is about survival and what it takes to survive.”

Green found his inspiration for writing FROZEN from something simple as a local morning newscast.

Green said, “I was watching the news and of course it’s the same temperature every day which isn’t so interesting. Behind the weather guy was a shot of Big Bear Mountain, and none of the chairs are moving. That took me back to the days when I used to ski on the East Coast and I began to wonder just what would happen or how I’d react if I got stuck on one of the lift chairs.”

Green went to work on the script for FROZEN while on set producing Paul Solet’s GRACE up in Canada.  When he was finished, the director envisioned FROZEN being somewhat of a cakewalk because of the basic premise- three kids in a chair lift. He had no idea what was in store for him.

“I started to realize that if I wanted to do this the right way, there’s no way I was going to shoot this on some set in front of a green screen,” said Green. “We were going to need to get up on a mountain somewhere and put three actors up in the air and shoot this right. It turns out that FROZEN would end up probably being the hardest film I’ll ever make.”

Green rounded up most of his usual crew (that also worked on set with him during HATCHET and SPIRAL) and found a group of rockstars in Utah, where FROZEN was filmed, that were willing to push themselves to the brink for the movie.

For the very first day, those involved with FROZEN had to do their normal tech scout.  While they knew that weather up on a mountain was going to be tough, no one could anticipate a blizzard that would dump a ridiculous 34 inches of snow on everyone trying to get equipment and cranes up the mountain.

FROZEN was shot at an elevation of around 8,000-9,000 and it was almost like the weather elements were almost the fourth cast member on the set because they certainly played a determining factor on how the shooting went. “We had 65 mph winds, snow, hail, and at night, the temperature would drop to 30 below if you can believe that,” Green said.

“The first day of shooting my eyeballs got sunburned,” Green added. “I took my glasses off to look through the monitor and everyone warned me not to, but I didn’t listen. I had no idea you could actually sunburn your eyes.”

The shoot tested the fortitude of Green and the film’s stars, but the director touts the crew as the driving force behind why FROZEN finished successfully.

Green said, “Even though FROZEN was hard on myself and the cast, it was so much harder on our crew.  They worked 16-20 hour days lugging equipment at such a high altitude, braving the elements, and it just pushed them to their limits.  They really were amazing.”

“Every day, I questioned myself for doing FROZEN but I had to put on a brave face to the cast and the crew. Each night when we’d finish, I would go home in so much pain and it was the same for every single person who worked on the set.  If we didn’t have so many dedicated people, there’s no way we could’ve finished,” Green added.

Another driving force for Green to push through with FROZEN was his cast who came prepared to deal with the intense shoot and never even complained about what they had to deal with while endlessly sitting 50 feet up in the bitter cold, shooting their scenes.

“I’ve never had a cast that was so dedicated to their performances,” explained Green. “Every Sunday night, we’d have dinners all together and discuss the shooting schedule for that upcoming week.  Then, I would meet with each of them separately and we’d talk about their character’s backstories and I’d give them conflicting information so that when they got up on that chair, their conflict and confusion on screen would be genuine.”

Green is now working on editing FROZEN in post-production and the film is slated for release in 2010.

Green said, “We’ve had a few screenings of a rough cut so far and I love watching the people in the audience react to it.  They’re usually gripping their armrests and looking uncomfortable.”

“We’ve even had a few people crying during it which is amazing as a filmmaker to get that kind of a reaction from a horror movie.  I am just really anxious to get FROZEN out and see how audiences react. It’s going to be intense,” added Green.

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