The highly-anticipated family movie ‘Disney/Pixar's Inside Out’ is finally making its premiere in Singapore on 27 August. InCinemas caught the preview of the animation and we can’t wait to tell you how much we loved it.
If you want to talk numbers, the film has already grossed over $600 million in box office revenue worldwide; clinched the title of the ‘Highest opening for an original title in its first weekend’, beating out ‘Avatar’; and in its first week of release in the US, it became the third highest grossing Pixar film of all time.
We had the opportunity to sit down with Oscar-winning director Pete Docter and co-director Ronnie Del Carmen during their Asia tour in Malaysia earlier this month, to largely discuss the development of the story, their visions and inspirations, animation challenges and more.
Read on to find out and check out our 1-on-1 interview video clip below!
Inspired by Docter’s Daughter
Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out is the first Pixar original movie since 2012 (Brave), and follows five emotions inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl, Riley. Directed and co-written by Docter, the film was inspired by his own daughter about five years ago when he realised there was a shift in her behaviour.
“She was a lot like the character (Ellie Fredricksen) in Pixar’s Up, and when she turned 11, she got really quiet and reserved. I talked to Ronnie who also has kids that are older than mine, told me ‘You just wait, it gets worse.’ So that was a good place to start because it was an emotional thing for me and with other parents,” said Docter at the press conference in KL.
“We thought we were telling a story a girl growing up, as it turns out, we are telling about a story about us watching our kids going up."
In the interview, he shared that there were scenes adapted from his own experience. "A lot of it is based on moments in real life but it has changed quite a bit. The film, goes through all these changes and what you are trying to do is support the overall thesis of the film. There are elements from the film that are taken from real life but then changed to suit the specifics of the story.”
Finding the Right Emotions
There are hundreds and thousands of adjectives to describe one’s feelings. A little girl holding her new toy may tell you she is feeling ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ (extremely happy), while the jaded employee may send a one-word WhatsApp message with ‘WTH’.
So how and why did Docter and his team decide to go with only five main emotions: Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust and Fear?
“It’s tricky because depending on which scientist you talk to, you get different answers as to how many emotions are there,” laughed Docter.
“We did play around with a bigger cast but it started to get very complex. You start to go like ‘Wait a minute, who’s that?’ The interesting thing was we talked to scientists recently who said, out of 270 different scientists in the world, most of them agree on five emotions and those are the same ones we put in the movie.”
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Co-director Carmen, elaborated: “At every stage, we were thinking that we were going to have maybe as many as six emotions for this movie. But every time when we try a different kind of emotion, some of them work but not enough for the movie. It will work for one gag, or maybe one or two sequences and then it doesn’t work anymore. We tried the emotion Hope, we tried Pride, we tried Surprise, all those characters seem interesting but it wasn’t quite right for the story.
The Train of Thoughts to The Land of Imagination
The mind is a wondrous place; it determines how you think, feel and act. In Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out, the creators have visualised how our minds work. Can’t seem to remember that particular day when you received your school’s examination results? It’s probably stored in ‘Long-term Memory’. Talking cars and rainbow unicorns do exist - in your mind’s ‘Dream Productions,’ that is!
Whatever you are able to conjure up with, this film probably has an adorable answer to it.
“When we were creating all the landscapes of Riley’s mind world, we consulted with the experts as to what these things are. Memories, we find out are easier to remember when there is an emotion attached to it. You remember something better if you remember it to be a happy, a sad, a fearful or upsetting moment. All the other memories that doesn’t have quite an emotion touch to them, you forget them easier,” explained Carmen.
Going 'Outside In'?
The film has been doing exceptionally well at the box office, and with a streak of film remakes and sequels popping up these few years, will we expect a ‘Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2’, or, as some would like to call it, ‘Outside In’?
Docter said: “For me, first of all, sequels are very challenging. They are tricky. You want to have something interesting and engaging and new, so it’s not just the first story told over again. It’ll be tough for this film because you’ve established that everybody has these five and so if more emotions suddenly showed up, you might break the story logic a little bit. I think I’ll probably just stick with the five.
[InC-terview]
Disney/Pixar's Inside Out opens InCinemas 27 August 2015!