Inside Pixar

How the giants of animation make a movie

By Charlotte Lytton

In the beginning...

When Pixar started out as a computer hardware company in the late seventies, the prospect of producing Oscar-winning features seemed an unlikely one. Financial losses were mounting, the company had turned to creating commercial advertising to stay afloat and, by 1990, its technology was being sold off to keep it in business.

Fast forward 20 years and the studio has made a name for itself as the leader of the animation game – thanks in part, at least, to the vision of the late Steve Jobs, who bought the company in 1986. "The company has this counter-culture, do-it-differently mentality," says producer Jonas Rivera. "That comes from him."

The main driving force remains John Lasseter, its Hawaiian shirt-toting chief creative officer who's been at its helm for two decades. Having been fired from Disney for pitching The Brave Little Toaster, an adventure film in which household appliances are able to talk, Lasseter has gone on to direct some of Pixar's biggest hits including Toy Story and A Bug's Life, and serves as executive producer of all of the studio's features. His relationship with Disney was revived in 2006 when they bought Pixar, and he has subsequently advised on every animated Disney feature from Wreck-It Ralph to recent cult kiddie hit, Frozen.

For Lasseter, the essential mix of entertainment and emotion are at the core of Pixar's work. "Walt Disney always said, 'For every laugh, there should be a tear.' I believe in that."

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From sketches to screen

If the aim is to pack an emotional punch, Inside Out – Pixar's first release in two years – certainly fits the bill. A sometimes-literal rollercoaster ride through pre-teen angst, the film is the studio's first to set the action in two different worlds, and to go beyond animating people and objects. "Joy is the most challenging character we've ever built at Pixar," the creatives say of their protagonist, who is entirely made up of particles. "We had to create the look of something that didn't exist."

The film follows the inner and outer lives of 11-year-old Riley – who is based on director Pete Docter's daughter Ellie (who also served as inspiration for his work on Monsters Inc and Up in a set of films Pixar creatives now affectionately term 'the Ellie trilogy'). The plot charts the five emotions in her mind, or Headquarters – Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust – as they direct her every move and grapple with one another over how best to do so.

Their new release took five years to complete, placing it at the latter end of Pixar's usual three to six year production spectrum. Directors are tasked with pitching three ideas to John Lasseter, but Docter explains that this film was, in fact, a fourth that materialised after their initial meeting. "The idea came out of nowhere," he says. "It felt like it came in from the sides and just took over."

Development on 'The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside the Mind,' as it was initially known, began in 2010 with a small team of animators. With an average of three seconds of animation being completed each week made up of some 177,800 drawings ("We overthink it. A lot," laughs the film's production designer, Ralph Eggleston), the creative team had 70 animators during its busiest stages – no mean feat considering the studio has, on average, eight films being worked on at any one time.

Inside Out went through ten full screenings before completion as well as being previewed in front of Pixar's Braintrust – a collective of the company's heads who are called upon to give feedback during the production process. It is considered by many of the studio's insiders as the key to their films' success, and has been credited with pulling flagging movies – such as Toy Story 2 – back from the brink.

The final cut, a whimsical imagining told through childhood memories, 'personality islands' and 'french fry forests,' has been declared a resounding success by critics, a box office hit and, according to our critic, 'peak Pixar.'

Creating emotion

Where Pixar is concerned, brightly coloured universes featuring desolate robots, industrious monsters and errant toys are imbued with a new level of emotional maturity, famously appealing to children and adults alike. The question is, how do they do it?

Pete Docter explains: "There's a trick to making an animated film suffused with emotion. You try to create a character you really love and care about, and then put them through things that happen to us in real life; disappointment, loss and truth. That's our job – to tell these stories and make people care about inanimate objects."

For co-director Ronnie del Carmen, who is tasked with the “dark nights of the soul, the emotional lows of the characters, their limitations and mistakes,” a childhood love of cartoons has seen him write some of film’s most emotional moments. “When I was growing up in the Philippines, we’d watch the Wonderful World of Color on TV every Sunday. It made me so happy – I didn’t know anything about animation, but it really affected me, and when it didn’t air, I’d feel like there was some kind of injustice in the world!”

And del Carmen is now responsible for making those memories for others. He says he is most frequently approached about Up, the 2009 tale of an unlikely friendship between a curmudgeonly old balloon salesman and an eight-year-old accidental stowaway. “People who find out I work at Pixar always tell me that the opening sequence made them cry within the first ten minutes of the movie. I’m happy to get to create those moments, because I think what we’re experiencing is the legacy of animation. Cartoons used to just be used for selling kids’ cereals, but animated features are now coming to be recognised as full stories.”

Rivera recalls Inside Out’s reception at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered to universal acclaim. “There were people there representing world cinema who were saying nice things about the film, and I realised in that moment was that they were seeing it as just a movie that happened to be animated. That’s what I hope to be remembered by.”

Watch Amy Poehler and the film's directors on the making of Inside Out

Pixar's five biggest Kleenex moments

Monsters Inc (2001)

Plot: The town of Monstropolis is powered by children's screams. But things go awry when its top 'scarer,' Sulley, must unexpectedly care for his arch-nemesis: an escaped toddler.

Kleenex moment: The pair, of course, become best friends but are forced to say a painful goodbye and return to their respective worlds.

Finding Nemo (2003)

Plot: A clownfish’s search for his son who has been scooped up by scuba divers and incarcerated in a dentist’s aquarium.

Kleenex moment: A barracuda attack wipes out Nemo's family, leaving just him and his father, Marlin.

Wall-E (2008)

Plot: Wall-E is a dented old robot left alone on Earth to clean up the mess that human-kind left behind. He aches with loneliness and, watching old reruns of Hello Dolly!, longs for love.

Kleenex moment: After Wall-E is nearly destroyed, the shiny new object of his affection, Eve, desperately reassembles him. Rebuilt, however, he's not the same loveable droid of old and rejects her. Can sobs of sorrow turn into tears of joy?

Up (2009)

Plot: Accompanied by a freckle-faced boy, old grouch Carl embarks on the South American balloon adventure that his late wife always craved.

Kleenex moment: The opening, wordless ten minutes, which show Carl's story from boyhood, to young love, to old age.

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Plot: Toy Story (1995) was the film that launched Pixar as the new force of sophisticated animation. But Toy Story 3 really upped the emotional ante as Andy's beloved childhood toys are rendered obsolete.

Kleenex moment: When the grown-up Andy realises that Woody still has a place in his heart, and plays with his delighted toys one last time.