Last week, MouseInfo was invited to get an insider look at the newest Disney-Pixar film INSIDE OUT. How insider was it? Well, we got the chance to sit down with director Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera as well as the film’s key voice actors: Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Phyllis Smith, Mindy Kaling, and Lewis Black. That’s pretty INSIDER, I’d say!

How did the characters get their colors? How did the five emotions get cast? These are some of the fun tidbits that we got to hear about. We’ll be exploring the film with a new article each day leading up to its actual release! Today we take a look at insights from Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera!

INSIDE OUT opens minds in theatres June 19, 2015.

Pete Docter – Director

Long-time Pixar veteran Pete Docter is clearly passionate about what he does. As the director of the film (and also the person responsible for the concept) he was happy to share many details about the film.

One thing that is immediately clear from the marketing of the film is that color is an important part of the story and Docter shared some insights as to the choices that were made. The “obvious” choices were made for most of the characters. Joy is naturally sunshiny yellow/orange, Sadness was an obvious blue, Anger was fiery red, Disgust was sickening green. What about Fear? Well, purple was still an unclaimed color and so that is how he got his trademark color! Leftovers!

Joy was originally going to have orange hair to match her emotion color but they decided that blue would better round out her appearance. Good call, right? It also gave the character a little bit of an extra edge to distinguish her as the leader over the other more monotone-colored emotions.

But the colors of the characters weren’t the only ways used to establish mood. Throughout the story, filmmakers were careful to craft the real-world environments in the film to match how Riley was feeling. San Francisco took on several different vibes; from sunny and bright to dark and foggy it was carefully crafted to give a film that was already full of emotion its own unique sense of life that reflected Riley’s perception of the city.

When it comes down to it though, Docter ultimately wanted INSIDE OUT to be a film with a central theme of  “coming together and our relationships with our family.” He commented that an important observation that he had was that “we all want our children to be happy, but life is not like that… we knew we wanted to talk about that from the beginning.”

Jonas Rivera – Producer

When initially pitching the concept of the film with Pete Docter, Rivera recalled John Lasseter was supportive, noting that the film sounded like a great concept but that conveying it as an interesting story was going to be really difficult. He remembered that Brad Bird had commented that the film that it was a great idea and “I’m glad you guys are doing it.” No pressure!

INSIDE OUT opens minds in theatres June 19, 2015. Keep an eye out here on MouseInfo for more inside looks at INSIDE OUT!

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