Pixar

New ‘Inside Out’ Trailer Released Online [UPDATED]

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Disney-Pixar has debuted the first full trailer for its next film, Inside Out, directed by Pete Docter. The film will be released by Disney into U.S. theaters on June 19, 2015:

insideout-teaserAlso Watch: Inside Out Teaser Trailer


First thoughts: Like many Pixar films, it’s a high-concept idea. Most of Pixar’s high-concept films (Wall-E, Up, Cars) lose me halfway through because their audacious set-ups fall apart at the seams and reveal a certain creative inauthenticity. Having said that, the presentation of Inside Out’s emotional universe shows as much promise as the best of Pixar’s movies. I hope it ends up more like the Toy Story series—the studio’s one high-concept idea that has a flawlessly functioning universe—than those other films.

The idea that each human character owns a set of five “emotions” could easily become confusing, but Docter and company found a solution by turning the emotion characters into symbols so that each emotional quintet appears consistent across each human. The emotions have design differences based on which human they’re in, but nonetheless remain easy to recognize regardless of whose mind they occupy. This parallel structure of emotional groups has a satisfying effect, even in this short trailer.

The filmmakers have invested a lot of effort into distinguishing the different “minds” of each character through broad symbolism: the mom’s mind has soft, rounded furniture and pastels; the dad has angular furniture and a techy man-cave feel. The rendering and lighting techniques also appear to be different in each mindspace, from the soft-focus mind of the mom to the cranked-to-eleven saturation of the girl’s head. Creating a universe in animation is one of the hardest things to do, and doubly difficult when that universe is visualizing non-physical mental states. Lots of deliberate creative choices had to be made for this idea to work as effectively as it does in this trailer, and I’m excited to see whether the concept can sustain itself for the length of a feature.

A live Twitter chat with Pete Docter about the film is taking place today at 1:15pm ET (10:15am PT). Details:

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Amid Amidi

Amid Amidi

Amid Amidi is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Cartoon Brew.

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