The heart and soul of ‘Inside Out’
Described by critics as inventive and moving, the computer-animated comedy-drama film “Inside Out,” produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures, is, not surprisingly, a hit among moviegoers young and old.
Described by critics as inventive and moving, the computer-animated comedy-drama film “Inside Out,” produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures, is, not surprisingly, a hit among moviegoers young and old.
Filipino artist Ronnie del Carmen finds himself on the co-director seat for “Inside Out” after serving as story supervisor in the hit animation movies “Finding Nemo” and “Up.” In his most recent vacation in the country, he shared that he took on the project because he welcomed the opportunity to work with “Up” director Pete Docter again.
“A lot of the confidence I have about saying yes to Pete on ‘Inside Out’ is because of my relationship with him making ‘Up.’ So when you are asked by Pete Docter to be his co-director, the answer is obviously yes and figure it out as you go,” he shared.
“We have a favorite expression at Pixar, we believe in jumping out of airplanes and building a parachute on the way down. That is kind of how you do it and that’s what I’ve been doing in my animation career,” he added.
From the heart
“Inside Out” follows the story of a young girl named Riley Andersen (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias). The other characters represent emotions living inside her mind, and here lies the heart of the movie. Her personified emotions are: Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling).
As each of these emotions interact inside Riley’s mind, the young girl’s personality gets affected. As the inner workings of the mind are told in colorful orbs and various personality islands as well as running into Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong and riding the Train of Thought, “Inside Out” turns from an animated feature into something that resonates with viewers of any age.
Meanwhile, del Carmen couldn’t be happier with the movie’s cast, which is central to the story.
“Amy is such a dynamo of activity and energy and positiveness that she is Joy,” he noted. “She actually not only embodies the actual name but she is joy herself... She’s full of variations of creations that it was, for us, easy to let her become the character.”
Del Carmen also thinks “there isn’t any person out there in the world who can play Anger better than Lewis Black. He and Procter basically told Lewis to play the character the way he would go through his thoughts and feelings.
They also felt the same way about Phyllis Smith, who for them was the only one who could play Sadness.
Hader, who plays Fear, was described by del Carmen as someone who has “so many characters inside him that he can be anybody at any point that (even workshopping) with the story department was a gift to us... And he’s so generous. We visited Bill at ‘Saturday Night Live’ and we learned from how to workshop everything at lightning speed.”
As for Disgust, del Carmen shared, “Mindy is such an amazing creative person that she reacts to certain things in a funny way. And disgust is one of the fastest emotions to trigger in human beings. Your reaction to kind of really battle that something that’s disgusting, whether it’s people or situations, Mindy’s native reaction to things is something you feel like, ‘I’m just gonna rip that over here and put it on a movie.’”
Touching the soul
The most important aspect of telling the story of “Inside Out” is how the makers themselves took pages off their own lives to bring Riley and her emotions to animated life.
It may be an emotional journey for two fathers but it was not only something they had to go through but share with others.
“Working on ‘Inside Out’ was special for me because the story revolved around Pete Docter’s daughter,” revealed del Carmen. The young spunky girl, Elizabeth ‘Elie’ Procter, had actually voiced Ellie in the movie “Up,” and was every bit perfect in her performance there.
They knew the young girl to be a happy child, but then, “Elie becomes older; she becomes an adolescent. Elie, (who) was kind of bubbly and talking and joking, disappears,” shared del Carmen. “She’s kind of slunk in a corner, worried about her friends, (talks in) monosyllabic, (hides) in her room. And you ask her what’s happening, ‘Are you okay?’ (She’ll just say) ‘Fine.’ And Pete’s wondering. ‘What’s happening? Where did my daughter go?’”
Del Carmen has a daughter older than Elie and he’s gone through all of that. “And I got to tell Pete of all the stages of what he’s about to (go through) and none of it was fun. I got to tell, alongside Pete, my experience of having a daughter.”
With del Carmen having first person experience and Pete echoing and bouncing ideas off him, the story took shape. “We were trying to discover what kind of story Pete was hunting for, and I got to shape it along with him,” he said..
The movie’s soul remains the young girl at the center of it, fashioned from one of the most important people in the lives of both directors. If only for that, it transcends being a hit animation into something important that needs telling.
“Inside Out” opens in local cinemas on Aug. 19.
Ronnie del Carmen, the Filipino co-director of Disney/Pixar’s latest hit, shares the fun and stirring journey of making this touching movie