Disclaimer: I was invited to an exclusive media day at Pixar and all expenses for this trip were covered by Disney/Pixar. ALL opinions are my own.
It was so much fun meeting with Ralph Eggleston while visiting Pixar for Inside Out Media day! Ralph Eggleson is the Production Designer on the film Inside Out! When we met with him our session was called “Inside the Mind”. I quickly related to Ralph when he described himself as a Disney Nerd, Film Nerd, and even referenced his love for the Walt Disney Museum! We learned all about how to create “the mind” and the “real world” using animation and storytelling.
If you haven’t seen the trailer yet to Inside Out be sure to scroll down and watch it so that our conversation with Ralph makes sense.
Creating this movie was quite the challenge. “What does the mind look like,” Ralph rhetorically begins his explanation to the creation of Inside Out. We know what the brain looks like, but we don’t know what the MIND looks like. Filmmakers wanted to be able to describe the mind and how it works. He described it as “organized confusion”. If you ask me, that pretty much describes my life.
Ralph explained how there had to be two different stories from Real World vs. Mind World while discovering the mind. They worked on this movie for over 5 years and they needed a definite difference visually to be able to determine the real world and the mind world apart. “The audience had to know the difference…” between the mind world and the real world. The Real World was created with smooth lines and desaturated color but it was also bright but it also had low contrast. In the Mind World, Ralph explains there is a glow and translucency to the characters but it had a high contrast.
Joy is the main character in the Mind! She sparkles and almost looks like champagne. They decided that they should make all of the mind characters look sparkly. This wasn’t all of the attention to visual detail needed for this film. The filmmakers actually had a “color script”. The color script is the layout and story of the different colors. You notice a difference of colors from Minnesota to San Francisco. The colors become more desaturated. Then in the Mind, “HEADquarters” were the light of the mind when dealing with the color and mind. “The world inside of the mind reflects how Riley is feeling.” (It is Riley’s mind.)
“Inside Out” opens in theaters on June 19, 2015!!
Your family will LOVE this movie! I can’t wait to take my 5 year old to see this movie! It is a GREAT way to teach kids about feelings and what happens in their mind. Watch the trailer below: