It was the morning of Wednesday, January 8, 2014. I had woken up three hours early cause I'd gone to bed three hours early. As I was killing the time before heading off to work, I saw a parody video posted on Facebook. It was a crude reenactment of an unnamed scene from "Frozen," (unnamed because everyone else but me knew what the scene was anyway). It was removed from Youtube like a week later.

What caught my attention though wasn't the crudely reenacted lyrics but the WONDERFUL sounding tune. I was like, "I've got to listen to that full song!" My eyes instinctively peeked right to look at the recommended options, and the first one at the top was this:

   • Disney's Frozen "Let It Go" Sequence ...  

So began my love affair with Elsa and with "Let It Go." I watched that video three times a day every day that week until Sunday, January 12 when I finally saw the entire movie for the first time. It was a breathtaking experience, only with one caveat: The "Let It Go" scene wasn't loud enough! This is the kind of movie that should have been released in IMAX. So yeah, was I late to the fanfare over "Frozen?" Yes I was. But better late than never.

At the time I saw the "Let It Go" scene linked above, it had 32 million views after being uploaded by Disney Animation on December 6. As of this post its at 96.9 million. Some of the most popular music videos out there fail to garner 100 million views in six months, yet this one scene is set to reach that in about 2.5 months.

Movie scenes don't get that many views unless they're that good, and the "Let It Go" scene is THAT good! It's got the THRILL of Test Drive and the DEPTH of Forbidden Friendship. There's so much I could say about the beauty of that song and how amazing of a character Elsa is, but suffice to say that "Let It Go" is the Anthem of Personal Liberation, and Elsa is just a notch below Astrid as my favorite female character.

That brings me to this video. I decided from the get go that I wanted to make it about Astrid, not Hiccup. The one line, "be the good girl you always have to be" made it feel weird for me to use him, and besides, I had a lot of ideas flying into my head over what I could use with Astrid.

Unfortunately, the video did not end up being as serious or as deep as I intended. I just could not find enough clips that were completely void of humor or playfulness, and I spent 3 whole hours yesterday scourging every TV episode available. So if you thought a few parts were funny, that's great and everything, but just understand that humor wasn't my intention.

My goal was to flesh out Astrid's personal story: How she was taught to be a coldblooded dragon killer; How she represses any feelings of empathy and happiness as she strives to be the "perfect girl"; And how she eventually becomes who she really is, which is a young woman full of love and tenderness not to mention a ton of dragon riding skills!

Once it become obvious to me that most of the clips at my disposal didn't have sufficient depth, I just let it go by creating a fastpaced thrill ride. As a surrogate for Elsa's ice powers, I used those aforementioned dragon riding skills and as many ice/snow clips as I could fine. I tried to mimic the original scene to the best of my abilities, right down to the awesome ice cave/tower from RoB Episode 8 ("Portrait of Hiccup as a buff man"). I even sacrificed some speed at 3:213:31 so I could mimic that part as accurately as possible. Could it have turned out better? Probably. But injecting the Winter Olympic Bobsled clip didn't help because every shot was too short, so I left the sequence as is.

As I discovered, there's just no perfect mimic for 2:54end of the original scene, which makes me explode into confetti every dang time! Watching Elsa morph into that blue dress....and the walk down the hallway....and stepping into the sun....and the shot of her ice castle....it's unlike anything I've seen since a young Viking stepped on lines in the sand and then flew a Night Fury through rocks.

Anyway, that covers everything. Still no custom thumbnail. I might tackle that next weekend.