‘Inside Out 2’ | Anatomy of a Scene

“My name is Kelsey Mann, and I’m the director of ‘Inside Out 2.’ So here in this scene, we see Joy and the original emotions come on to this new space that’s inside Riley’s imagination. And it’s an area that’s being taken over by Anxiety. She’s working with all these mind workers to come up with worst case scenarios of what could happen the next day to Riley and how she could screw it all up.” “Riley misses an open goal. Coach writes about it in her notebook. Yes, more like that.” “Oh, no. They’re using Riley’s imagination against her.” “And Joy wants to stop that at all costs. I always envisioned this being a movie about anxiety taking over and was reflecting on my own life and how my anxiety does that in me. And the instant my head hits the pillow, I start thinking about the next day, thinking and worrying about what could go wrong and how I can kind of avoid those things. And I thought this could be something that I think a lot of people could relate to.” “Why are you drawing a hippo?” “I’m not. I’m drawing. Riley.” “Joy, you forgot her ponytail.” “Oh, I love her ponytail. Yes.” “Riley scores and everyone hugs her? 81? That is not helping.” “Visually, with this space, I always kind of imagined it like a bunch of workers in cubicles. But we’re like, well, this place is in Imagination Land. How do we make it a little bit more fun? And it was really — Jason Deamer is our production designer and Josh West is our sets art director. They came up with this really fun idea of using giant playing cards as the cubicle walls.” “Who sent that projection to Riley?” “Why would I know that?” “What is going on? Who is sending all of this positive — Joy, I know you’re in there.” “And then we’re like, wait a minute, what if the workers are actually animating? What if they’re drawing on animation desks?” “Don’t listen to Anxiety. She’s using these horrible projections to change Riley.” “A lot of this is based off of a bunch of oppressed workers that eventually stand up to their employer and their boss. And we were definitely inspired by a few scenes. There were three in particular I would refer to — ‘Field of Dreams,’ where she’s standing up talking about the book burning. Then there’s ‘Jerry Maguire,’ where he was saying, come on, everybody. Join me. I’m quitting, and come with me. And then the really iconic one was ‘Norma Rae,’ where she’s standing up and unionizing and having everybody turn off their machines.” “Yeah, there we go.” “What if Riley is so bad she has to give up hockey forever?” “What if Riley does so well that the coach cries, and the Olympics call and she rallies a weary nation to victory?” “Uh, Joy, reality is also a thing.” “And also ‘Network.’ Anger’s speech here was 100 percent influenced from ‘Network.’” “Nightmares. But you don’t have to take it anymore.” “And what better person than Lewis Black to deliver a speech like that.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “Oh, my projections!” “Pillow fight!” “Riley!” “You need to be prepared.”