Devin Blackwood

djblackwood2@mail.fhsu.edu
Inside Out

Now this is a movie that I have both seen and one that I was looking forward to watching

the minute I saw it on the syllabus. Nowadays you see people all over the internet talking about

the decline of Pixar as a company and people just wanting them to fail in general, but I do not

find their accusations to be true. Sure some of the more recent movies such as Cars 2, The Good

Dinosaur, and Monsters University are not the strongest animated movies ever released, and

many including myself see the missed potential in Brave, even if it does feel like the directors

did try to cobble together two different movies at times, but even their weaker output is better

than the weaker films released by several competing studios, and I believe that movies like Up,

Toy Story 3, and Inside out prove that the studio can still pack a punch when presented with the

right story.

There were many aspects of the movie that I enjoyed. For one, I adore composer Michael

Giacchinos (he also composed the score for Up) score in this film with its often sparse

orchestration and lack of popular music. Riley and Joy kind of share this brittle and joyous

sounding theme where the melody is scored into the upper range of the piano and accompanied

by harp, vibraphone, flute, strings, and the rather unusual choice of either the glass armonica or

crystal glasses (my guess is the former because it provides the same tone as glasses while being

easier to play). Mr. Giacchinos themes for the character Sadness were also appropriately scored

and usually featured lower instruments such as a tuba, bass clarinet, and electric bass. The score

of Inside Out is definitely is able to adequately perform a scores main goal of setting the mood of

a scene and helping to depict a characters personality without ever being intrusive, and I really

do think that the sparseness of the orchestra works in this movies case. The most common
instruments we hear in this movie are pizzicato strings, guitar, harp, flute, bass clarinet, mallet

percussion, piano and electric bass with rare appearances from other instruments such as the

brass section, saxophones, clarinet, recorder, accordion, organ, bassoon, and oboe (I have it

playing on YouTube and have re-listened to around 30 minutes of it as I type this) when needed

to further the feeling of tension during a dramatic moment or add an extra sparked to a happy

moment. That being said, the vast majority of the music in Inside Out is non-diegetic with the

only diegetic music in the film coming from Riley (as a small child), Joy, and Bing Bong singing

the song to make Bing Bongs rocket wagon fly.

Page 274 in our textbook defines dialog as being the recorded speech of characters both

on and off screen. I do not remember the movie being overly heavy on dialogue, or at least it was

not as heavy as it was in the production of the play Dracula I went to see last Friday. On page

375, the book defines the term narration as meaning the commentary that is provided by a

character who can be onscreen or off screen. In the case of Inside Out, the narrator comes our

protagonist Joy from the start of the movie throughout the films ending. I also found the voice

casting of the film to have been fantastic with the main roles mainly going to comedic actors

most of us recognize from either the sitcom The Office (Sadness and Disgust) or Saturday Night

Live (Fear and Joy). I found Phyllis Smiths performance of Sadness to be the strongest in the

film by far and I cannot imagine a better actress to play the part. I really enjoyed when we

watched the video the other day in class where we were able to see some of the actors and

actresses perform their characters.

In conclusion, I found Inside Out to be an absolutely fantastic film and I will definitely

watch it again in the future as I have many times in the past. This movie really shows that Pixar

still has it when it comes to making coherent and uplifting movies that go beyond the realm of
childrens film and into the realm of family friendly movies that nearly anyone can enjoy without

feeling too old or too young.

Barsam, R., & Monahan, D. (2016). Looking at movies: An introduction to film. (5th

ed.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company