The Reel Rejects - Meeting the DIRECTOR of INSIDE OUT 2 + PIXAR Animation Studio Visit Continued!!

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

CONTINUING OUR ADVENTURE AT PIXAR ANIMATION! With the long-awaited sequel to Inside Out only a few weeks away, we were allowed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit Pixar in Emeryville, California for a deep dive into modern Animated Movie Production + An interview with Director, Kelsey Mann as well as Producer Mark Neilsen! Inside Out 2 features the returning voice talents of Amy Poehler as Joy, Phyllis Smith as Sadness, & Lewis Black as Anger along with Tony Hale voicing fear (taking over for Bill Hader) & Liza Lapira as Disgust (taking over for Mindy Kaling) + new Emotions, Anxiety voiced by Maya Hawke, Ennui voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos, Ayo Edebiri as Envy, and Paul Walter Hauser as Embarrassment. The film picks up a handful of years after the first, with young Riley turning 13 and starting to experience a host of new changes & experiences. Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ Music Used In Manscaped Ad:  Hat the Jazz by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! Head Editor: https://www.instagram.com/praperhq/?hl=en Co-Editor: Greg Alba Co-Editor: John Humphrey Music In Video: Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ask Us A QUESTION On CAMEO: https://www.cameo.com/thereelrejects Follow TheReelRejects On FACEBOOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM:  FB:  https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thereelrejects Follow GREG ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/thegregalba/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thegregalba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It is John back out here once again in the cinema streets. Today we're in front of the illustrious Steve Jobs building on the Pixar Animation Studios campus. Get that angle. We're going to tour the facility. We're going to check in with a few of the different departments. that have worked on this thing for the past four years learn about some of the different steps along the road to creating an animated feature such as Inside Out too

and then we're going to talk to the producer and director of the movie along with maybe screening a little footage hopefully so it's going to learn some stuff and hey think of some questions while you're at it. Aloha Reject Nation, it's Johnald back here once again picking up where we left off last month with our little field trip to the

Pixar campus in Emoryville, California, if you miss that video, it's linked down below, it's in the description box, it's in the pin comment, YouTube terminology. But for those of you just joining us now, welcome. The TLDR is I was recently afforded the unique opportunity to head out to Emeryville, which is just outside of San Francisco, to tour the grounds in the various studio spaces at Pixar, as well as to screen the first roughly half hour about the first act of Inside Out two, which I laid some basic thoughts and details out from as much as I could in that first video. So if you're interested in that, by all means, go check it out. And along with that, they also took us on a sort of deep dive through the various departments and processes that

go into crafting and sculpting one of these flagship animated features. So if you're interested at all in filmmaking and especially modern animated cinema, it's definitely worth look and not just because I made it. I am proud of it. But also, it was a truly unique experience and I am incredibly grateful to the folks at Disney and Pixar for having us out and for giving us such a comprehensive look behind the curtain and segue allowing me to speak with the director Kelsey Mann as well as producer Mark Nielsen about their inspirations for the film as well as some of the challenges involved in returning to and expanding upon a story as beloved as the original inside out so first we're going to hear from them and then I've got a few more

things to share with you guys from my time at Pixar so leave a like on the video, leave a like for animated sequels, and let's hop back into it. Awesome. Welcome to Pixar. Thank you. Thank you for having us here. I have a million questions, and we have five minutes. Let's get them all in. Yeah. I mean, this is a project. I am bursting with ideas just being here for a few minutes, you know, and this is a project, obviously, where the premise alone gives you infinite potential. So I guess my first question would be, how do you go about balancing the potential for fun, the potential for emotional nuance with the needs of the plot plus multiple character arcs contained within one person.

Yeah, it's a lot. That's a four-year question. This is my trick. It's complicated. You know, you're cutting from here to there to here to there to here to there. This world is definitely like, there's a lot of cutting. There are people in headquarters. There are people out in the mind.

And then there's Riley where she's at. There's more emotions than the first movie. Yeah, it can get really. it's finding the right balance between all of them. So it's definitely a challenge to balance all the different aspects of this world. Yeah, and we kind of do it by screening it over and over to make sure that that balance of ingredients is right. And it's usually not right at the beginning, like not even close.

Yeah, sometimes. And then you get it closer and closer to like the right amount of ingredients in your soup. Yeah, and over so many years too. And I know you've said you have people, you research the movie on and stuff like that. But like, you know, youth is changing and generations advanced. way faster than they did before, and you're working on these things for like five or six years at a time.

You know, what is the process for managing that authenticity with just the day in and day out needs of a production? Yeah, I mean, one thing that's great about this film is it's about something that's so universal that despite the change in technology and what's going on out there in the world

and changes in generations and the pandemic, the emotions we're dealing with in this movie are universal. They're ones we all have, no matter what age you are, no matter what stage you're in in life. So I think tapping into that is something that we've really grounded this film in. I don't know if it's good or bad, but everybody can relate to anxiety. I was going to say it's particularly anxious time.

Yeah, right, right? I started in January of 2020 on this movie, and I made a whole list of emotions that could come up and saw anxiety. And I was like, oh, and I kind of circled it. And I'm like, it feels, there's already a topic. and then that was important to a lot of people and becoming an issue and then the pandemic hit

and it just dialed up even more and we'd already decided like let's make a movie about that and if anything it went up even more after the pandemic and you know what better way to you know the really great thing about dealing with our emotions

the first thing part of dealing it is just naming it and talking about it and that's what's so a about what we're able to do with this movie. And not only we name it and talk about it, but you actually also give it a face. Like, you can actually see it now. Like, you know, and when we first were designing anxiety,

and we hit where we landed on, I'm like, that's it. That's her. That's totally my anxiety. That's what she looks like. I never knew it. Sure. And just, I guess, to wrap up, I'm curious, just at home, how did the kids feel about knowing that they're part of the soup of a major motion picture? Probably, if I'm being honest,

at their console. Because they're like, oh my goodness, yeah, don't talk about me. Yeah. It's probably a lot of that. Yeah, even this morning,

I have three girls and they were like, are you using us as an example in your interviews? I'm like, maybe, maybe. No. It's only Pete Doctor's kids.

I only talk about Mark's kids. Yeah, of course. And vice versa. And vice versa. I can't point fingers at us. Blame Mark. Yeah, You're a producer, so I guess that has to have all the fingers pointing at you.

Well, guys, thank you so much for your time. What's a pleasure. Looking forward to the complete experience. Yeah, we can't wait to finish it and show you the rest. I believe you. Thanks, man. Thanks a lot, dude. All right.

Thank you past John from future to you, but past to all of you, John. Wibbley, wimely, timey, whimey. Welcome back to the other corner of the room. And if you've made it this far in the video, just thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you for, you know, taking an interest in this. Obviously, this type of video is a bit of a rarity. It's a bit of an anomaly for us, and it's in huge part thanks to, again, you guys taking an interest and showing support that we're able to take these opportunities when they arise.

So, again, thank you very much for watching. Thank you for tuning into this video. And now, back to Pixar. I mean, we were at Pixar for the interviews as well. But let's jump back into our little studio tour. We got a couple more things from that experience to go over as a minute. matter of fact. So in the first half, they walked us through the virtual set scout and camera setups, which gave us a real look at how far cinematography has come in the digital animated space, especially. Some of those rigs still blow my mind just the way that you can pick

them up and, you know, choose lenses and focal lengths and line-up shots the way you would with a physical camera and a physical space. Wild stuff, at least in my eyes. And then we got to sit in on an animation polish with a number of the artists, basically taking scenes that further along and tweaking them and adding adjustments and in real time sort of drawing new takes on how the scene could play out or how certain motions could be realized and articulated. And then finally we had the character design session where they walked us through their sort of guiding principles of design for the characters and Inside Out and then turned us loose to come up with our own emotion-based characters.

You already know what it is. I got silly. I'm still waiting on that call from Pixar. So if you want to see this character in Inside Out, three start at change.com or something. We'll get there. I believe in us. Rejagnation Strong. But yes, our next stop through the inner workings of the animation sausage was the story pitch session, which was headed up by story supervisor John Hoffman, along with story artist, Becca McVeigh, basically walking us through the process of pitching an animated sequence

in storyboard form based off of the written script. With Becca essentially acting out the scene in tandem with her drawings and storyboards just to give us a sense for the scene's rhythm and humor and then from there John along with the director Kelsey Man would shop the pitch and give feedback addressing things like the overall flow of the sequence itself as well as how it pertains to the story as a whole making adjustments and in our case

sort of illustrating the idea that you know as a writer as an artist you need to sometimes be willing to kill your darlings so to speak as there were certain gags and jokes that turned up in the pitch that while quite funny and endearing in the moment might not have served to enhance the overall flow and point of the scene. And it really served to illuminate it, at least to me, the fact that editing is always happening throughout every part of the process. I would argue in an animated movie format especially. And to see just how much performance is involved even in the writing and storyboarding phases

of a project like this. It's like a many-armed, multi-form version of sketching, you know? You're just drawing lines and then erasing a few and then adding one element and taking away another and sort of sculpting over time. Fascinating stuff, but I digress. Next, they took us to the recording studios for a mock voiceover session, allowing us to lend our dulcid tones to a couple of the scenes from the screening. They gave us each an agent and had us join the union and assured us that voiceover acting is among the least competitive fields in the performing arts today. Obviously, I'm kidding, but it definitely gave me a renewed appreciation for the unique art and skill that voice acting is. Hello, everybody! Oh my gosh, I am just such a huge fan of yours.

Okay, how can I help? I can take notes, get coffee, manage your calendar, walk your dog, carry your things, watch you sleep. Wow, you have a lot of energy. Maybe you could just stay in one place? Anything. Just call my name, and I'm here for you. Okay. that, what was your name again? And then finally, to cap things off, they took us for a live session in the editing bay with lead editor, Marissa Horwitz, which made for a really nice

culmination of everything we had observed up to that point, essentially showing how every part of the process converges on the editing timeline, starting with all the various storyboards laid out in sequence across the timeline, just the rough sketches, and sort of just working from there as the process is refined and adjusted over the months and years that ensue. And between, again, the various departments as scenes and sequences are animated and swapped in, updated, and swapped out again, along with temporary music cues and voiceovers, often recorded by just various staff members on hand until the actual voice actors can come in and lay down their tracks so that those can be swapped in, along with the final score and sound

effects and other embellishments. And it really drove home the idea to me that animated movies, I think in particular are sort of like big, drawn-out, protracted sketching sessions, essentially. You're laying down lines and basic shapes, then you're erasing and refining and sculpting, draw a new line here, add a color there, until finally all the different departments have had their say and run their courses, and you're left with the final polished piece. And speaking of the finished piece, I cannot wait to see how the final cut of Inside Out 2 ultimately turns out. You know, as I said in the first video, the original Inside Out is definitely one of the higher tier Pixar films for me. Uh, you know, a sequel certainly comes with a certain amount of

apprehension just as a prospect. However, based on what we've seen here and just getting a glimpse at the level of craftsmanship and artistry that goes into these movies, I do have faith that they can stick that landing. And I certainly hope that come June, we are graced with yet another lovely, thoughtful and imaginative effort from the folks over at Pixar. Uh, it's been a really lovely experience getting to not only go out there and observe all this stuff, but to bring it back to you guys and to throw it out there and see what you all have to say about it. I certainly hope we're able to enjoy some more opportunities like this in the future. But yeah, just another huge, huge thank you to you guys for tuning in and for making these videos possible as well

to the folks over at Disney and Pixar. I'm just incredibly grateful for an opportunity like this not only to travel and to see some new parts of our fair state, but but also to engage so directly with an art form that I truly, truly love. And a huge thank you to Greg as well for suggesting me for this assignment and creating space for me to be able to physically make the trip. Very grateful to him as well. He could have easily gone in my stead and delivered, you know, his own flavor of video, which on a multiversal timeline did happen.

It's all connected. Disney things. But yeah, thank you all so much again, especially if you watch both these videos, if you made it to the end. I'm really rooting for them to stick. the landing on this one and to once again deliver us something thoughtful and universal and maybe even a little bit poignant but for right now are you guys excited what do you guys think will you be there on opening day for inside out to leave your thoughts in the comments people and i will catch you on the next one much love and as always cheers