We’ve seen snippets of material from Pixar’s new film** Inside Out** a couple of times already, first at last year’s D23 event (where we also talked to one of the voice performers, Phyllis Smith) and more recently at CinemaCon. But last night, the Emeryville studio flew director Pete Docter and producer Jonas Rivera to Los Angeles to show off more footage and talk about the film.
**Inside Out **is set within the noggin of Riley, an 11 year-old girl who has moved with her family to San Francisco. As she sets out to make new friends, audiences will go inside her mind to explore how memories are formed and how a mixture of five emotions – Joy (Amy Poehler), Disgust (MIndy Kaling), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) – define her life experiences.
In addition to a dinner table scene we’d seen previously, Rivera and Docter introduced the first five minutes of the film, which by necessity blended pencil animatics, early animation and some completed shots to document Riley’s first day and early few years. Though it might not quite rival** Up**’s married life montage for sheer heart-rending power, it’s packed with joyful moments and will ring true for everyone, parents or otherwise.
After that, we got the broad strokes of the film’s story, which involves Joy and Sadness getting lost within the mind and having to make their way back to headquarters. As they travel through some of the weirder parts of Riley’s consciousness (we can’t wait to see how the animation team brings abstract thought to life), Fear, Disgust and Anger try their best to run Riley’s emotions, without much success.
With the movie now a year away (which Rivera joked would skip by in a minute because animated film schedules go by like dog years), the animation is roughly 50 per cent complete, but already looks very different to other Pixar films. Docter said that he’d pushed the various teams to channel classic Tex Avery and other ‘toons to employ more of a colourfully cartoonish environment than previous work. The result, even in its rough stage, is a fascinating, funky, funny guess at what the mind might look like, or as Docter put it, “an Apple store crossed with It’s A Small World…”
Of particular note is the way memories are created and stored – as glass spheres like snow globes that can be rewound. They’re held in a massive rack as short-term memories, before being cleared away at night to become part of long-term storage.
We’ll have longer interviews with Docter and Rivera up shortly, but theirs wasn’t the only presentation at the event. Animation supervisor Jim Murphy arrived – touting a guitar – to introduce his directorial debut, Lava. The romantic, tectonic short is a musical about a volcano looking for love. As per Jim’s orders, we’re keeping the rest of the story a secret for now, but suffice to say, it’s typically lush, charming and inventive.
Both **Lava **and Inside Out will be out in the UK on June 19, 2015 in the US and July 24 in the UK.