“I came up with the idea of Inside Out while watching my daughter. As she was growing up and got to be eleven, I wondered what was going on in her mind!” Pete Docter laughed as he shared this story with an advanced screening audience at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, Texas. Joined by producer Jonas Rivera, Pete commented that our thoughts could be fun, and he and the Pixar team decided to create their own version of the seven dwarfs based on emotions.
Over 1000 people at Pixar worked for five years to create a film that might help to explain all the weird dreams, crazy thoughts, and songs that get in our heads. And although the film is a lot of fun, there was a great deal of research involved in identifying emotions, understanding how they develop, and how they manifest themselves through words and actions. Although psychologists, neurologists, and other specialists were interviewed, there was no consistent answer as to how many emotions a person has and so the writers focused on the core emotions of Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust, and Fear to tell the story.
Pete and Jonas did note that although there was a great deal of diversity in the research, one thing was true – everyone has the same emotions and girls, ages 11-17, have the most heightened emotions.
But creating a personification of an emotion is a very complex process. What do they look like? What color are they? What do they sound like? The process began with shapes – Joy was a star; Sadness, a teardrop; Fear, a squiggly line; Anger, a brick; and Disgust, broccoli.
From that colors were added: Sadness was blue, Anger was red, and of course, Disgust was green. The actors themselves added a great deal to the images as the voices helped to define the characters’ personalities. As the story developed, there were more complex questions – do emotions eat? Sleep? Have chairs? Another struggle was the use of pronouns; if Riley is hungry, do her emotions say “I” or “we.”
Audience members may note that the adult emotions are gender specific to the characters, but Riley’s emotions were both male and female. Jonas Rivera explained that they wanted to focus on Riley as the main character. When a person is young, they are not always calcified in their ways and the diverse emotions adds to both the conflict and the humor of their lives.
The director and production crew did have fun with the story and there are numerous symbols that pay homage to other Pixar movies. The background memories at Headquarters are from Up and there are three separate Pizza Planet trucks from the Toy Story films in the memories. In Pixar tradition, a short titled Lava precedes the film.
Everyone involved in the project wanted to create a fun, yet meaningful movie. Parents want their kids to be happy and to be able to get rid of all the other emotions they have in life. However, it is often the difficult times and subsequent emotions that bind us together and give us the lessons and wisdom to carry on through our lives. Often we try to avoid our emotions. Pete stated, “There is a reason we feel this.” We need to acknowledge our emotions and why they are there. Although this is an animated movie for kids, the theme of dealing with changes and challenges and the accompanying emotions is one that all ages can relate to.