MANILA – It all started with a father’s curious love and concern for his teenage daughter. From being a jolly little kid, she became a gloomy and indifferent adolescent. The father is Inside Out co-director, Pete Docter.
“Pete Docter wanted to know what was going on inside his daughter’s head,” shared Ronnie del Carmen, the film’s co-director, during a lecture about the making of Inside Outat SM Aura’s IMAX.
In between the production stories and behind-the-scenes sneak peek of the newest film, Ronnie also shared a little bit about his life and journey with Pixar.
Ronnie hails from Cavite. He graduated from the University of Santo Tomas with a degree in Fine Arts major in Advertising. Early on, Ronnie’s love for animation has become apparent. He joked that as a student, he would draw caricatures in his Mathematics books instead of studying them.
He joined Pixar right in time for the production of Finding Nemo where he was a story supervisor.
Apart from Finding Nemo, del Carmen also worked on Ratatouille, and Up–where he was responsible for the famous four and a half minute-montage of Ellie and Carl’s love story. Ronnie, having had a background on advertising, credits this feat to his experiences in compressing stories to 30-second or even 10-second TV spots without missing the message that needed to be communicated.
Inside Out according to Ronnie was by far, the hardest film he has ever worked on. “We don’t know what emotions look like,” chortled Ronnie. The team had to research about a lot of psychological concepts. They had to talk to psychiatrists and learn about each emotion that a person feels and had to narrow the long list down to joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust.
The characters representing the five emotions were conceived after post its upon post its of ideas plastered on boards, and 3D figures that were reviewed and revised by the Pixar team over and over, “Pixar characters are fruits of years and years of meeting and refining.”
Despite the tedious process that the team of Inside Out had to go through, Ronnie never thought of giving up, “a movie is about writing and re-writing, storyboarding and re-boarding.”
Inside Out follows the life of a young girl named Riley. From the moment she was born until she grows up to become an adolescent starting to experience different kinds of emotions especially when she, along with her family had to move to a different city.
The five main characters are voiced by Amy Poehler (Joy), Phyllis Smith (Sadness), Bill Hader (Fear), Lewis Black (Anger) and Mindy Kaling (Disgust). Also in the movie are Richard Kind as Bing Bong, Kaitlyn Dais as Riley, Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan as Riley’s mom and dad.
As parting words, Ronnie reminded the audience who were a mix of students, press, writers, storytellers and ‘animation freaks’ that films, like other brilliant works, always start with a simple idea coupled with determination, “Just make something and finish it. Show it to people. Get feedback and then do it better the next time. Do this over and over.”
Inside Out will be in cinemas on August 19.
Watch the official trailer:
