The cast and crew of Inside Out have many reasons to be ‘Joy’ful today, as the film held its world premiere in beautiful Cannes, France. On hand for the premiere were director Pete Docter, producer Jonas Rivera and Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter who were joined by Amy Poehler (voice of Joy), Mindy Kaling (voice of Disgust), and Phyllis Smith (voice of Sadness).
In addition, members of the French vocal cast were also in attendance and participated with the group in an engaging press conference following the screening of the film. The live Q&A session streamed on the official Cannes Film Festival YouTube channel and while it was captivating – many questions and remarks did reveal unreleased details surrounding the film. While we will omit those details (to prevent spoilers), we did enjoy hearing the comical reason that the character Bing Bong is made of cotton candy.
John Lasseter: Why is he (Bing Bong) made of cotton candy, Pete?
Pete Docter: Because I just like cotton candy.
As the press conference continued John Lasseter spoke about the evolution of computer-animated films – with over 250 films produced since the release of Toy Story (which celebrates its 20th Anniversary later this year). He reminded the audience, “If you use technology correctly you can change opinions overnight”, which may sound familiar as he touched on this very topic during a discussion on May 12 for “The New Audience: Moviegoing in a Connected World” panel. The audience, who could hardly contain their excitement for both cast and crew gushed about their love for Inside Out and Pixar Animation Studios – stating “Best film I’ve seen here in Cannes” and “You’re the Best storytellers – period.” With glowing remarks such as these, it’s no wonder that the anticipation for the theatrical release of Inside Out continues to grow.
All the films we do, whether they be about monsters, fish, or cars, we want to project something of our own lives and put them on the screen so that the audiences recognizes their own experiences in the movies that we make. That’s what we’re all striving to do and we hope we’ve done it with this one.
Pete Docter
The official Cannes Film Festival website has posted an additional interview with Pete Docter highlighting topics ranging from research to editing. Below is a snippet of some of our favorite questions.
At what point, as the film took shape, did this idea of characters representing emotions come to you?
Right at the beginning. Joy was the first, who I initially called “Optimism”, due to a lack of knowledge about emotions. During our research, we spoke to psychologists and psychiatrists and realized that the number of listed emotions is an area of debate. We chose five, because we didn’t want too many, or writing the screenplay would have become a real headache.
What technical difficulties did you have to get over?
I didn’t want the characters to resemble humans, so I gave the technical team the challenge of making them resemble what we feel. They came back to me with the idea that they should be made of a sort of energy. If you look closely at each character, you’ll see they release tiny particles of color when they move around.
How did the editing go?
It was a meticulous process. The difficulty was that two stories were being played out at the same time: Riley’s, as she moves from the country to the city, and Joy’s, as she is swept out of the main part of Riley’s mind and tries to get back. But each story communicates with the other and influences it. What we had to do was create links between cause and effect.
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