The screenplay for ‘inside out’ was empty, so why am i crying?
A couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d make a stab at writing a script report. My aim was to write a report for Inside Out, but from the perspective of Illumination, the home of all things Minion. Instead, after reading the screenplay, I was overwhelmed with the urge to write something else.
This.
Going into reading the script, I was ready to write reams on how the studio needed more ‘worker beans’ to market and put on posters and treat in much the same way as the minions. What I found instead was… nothing. The script is nothing but the absolute bare bones of what the final movie became, and it’s perfect. Despite its thin use of language, I still found myself getting emotional in all the same places and was just as gripped as I was when I watched the finished film for the first time. So, instead of writing about the ways a different studio would have produced the script, I’m going to talk about why Inside Out’s script is perfect just the way it is.
STRONG CHARACTERS
First and foremost, the characters of Inside Out are invariably distinct. Of course, there are only a handful of named human characters and all our main protagonists share names with basic human emotions, but even beyond that the sense of identity in the cast is meticulous. The aforementioned worker beans (who aren’t beans in the script) are all just as vibrant and unique as the core cast despite their limited screentime. All the dialogue is deliberately placed, even when it comes across as conversational or superfluous. Every line is absolutely necessary to further plot, develop character, or both.
The core cast of emotions are of course the pinnacle of this. Joy being a flawed protagonist is so simply communicated on page 2 when she declares that:
“It was amazing. Just Riley and me, forever…”
“…for 33 seconds.”
Joy’s character is surmised here and the core thread of her superiority over the other emotions drives almost every element of the drama to come.
The way the characters each speak expertly communicates their character, as well. Joy speaks in quick, short, snappy sentences, while Sadness often loses herself mid-sentence (when Joy even allows her to speak), returning to herself to apologise for getting things wrong.
Through these strong characters, drama seems to flow naturally. Despite the impassable disconnect between Riley and her emotions, the two coexist through the emotions dramatic ‘want’ to keep her safe. The drama rises in how they think it’s best to achieve that.
TEXTBOOK PACING
I’m not going to patronise or proselytise about the ‘ten-page rule’. If you’ve ever picked up a book about screenwriting, you’re probably aware of the notion that if nothing happens by page ten, no producer is going to read any further.
Well, whether you think it’s a load of rubbish or not, Inside Out uses it with textbook accuracy. With all the set-up of how the world works, who our protagonists are, and playing in the ‘world at peace’, page ten ends with the question,
“After all, Riley’s 11 now. What could happen?”
And page 11 begins with the direction,
“Moving sign: Sold!”
With Riley’s carefully nurtured personality challenged by massive upheaval, the story can begin in earnest. It’s a thing of beauty because, unless you’re looking for it, this benchmark is completely seamless.
This happens routinely. Bing Bong’s arrival on page 64 is almost exactly halfway through the script. Just as the hero’s seem about to give up, in swoops a bumbling mentor to put them back on track and teach them the dramatic lesson that will take them back home. That lesson comes on page 111, just shy of 20 pages before the script ends.
If you took a script of nearly 130 pages and broke it down into the textbook lengths of act 01, 02, 03, 04, and 05, I bet Inside Out would fit neatly inside almost every single act, but as an audience member, you just can’t tell.
But we already know Inside Out has great characters, we’ve probably all already seen the film. We also know that the pacing is near-perfect, even if we don’t ‘know’ that we know. The real magic of the Inside Out script is, as the article title suggests, on the page. Or, rather, not on the page.
WRITING TO MEDIUM
One of the main rules that writing lecturers will tell budding scriptwriters is, “if you can’t point a camera at it, don’t write it down.” Inside Out, however, does a big wee all over that when, on page 7, directions read.
“It (a memory) rolls to the Core Memory Holder. Clicking into position, a LIGHTLINE shoots out. The Emotions follow it to the back window and watch a new ISLAND OF PERSONALITY form.”
What in all hell is an ‘island of personality’? and how is anyone meant to point a camera at it?
The script is littered with these abstract visuals, with my personal favourite being,
“Bing Bong does a spot-on dolphin impression.”
Initially, this abstract and slightly emotion-driven style of writing threw me. How was anyone meant to know what this looks like from just reading it? But then I remembered, they’re not.
This isn’t a ‘normal’ screenplay. It’s an animation. The directions and descriptions are intentionally vague to leave room for artists and animators to assert their craft on the product. Moreso than in any medium, the writer’s job in animation is to guide artists, not dictate to them. This frees writers up to be more emotive with their language. They don’t want a reader to ‘see’ the film in their mind, they want an artist to ‘feel’ it in their soul.
So, when the mind workers aren’t introduced as sparkly beans wearing uniforms (with one exception), it’s deliberate. It doesn’t matter what they look like to the writer, they’re just workers. Give the artists freedom to design whatever is true for the story to work.
Now, this method isn’t universally used in the script. Sometimes it’s important to build a specific visual. For example, when introduced, Joy is described as “glowing”, while sadness is “droopy” and “blue”. None of the other emotions are given physical descriptors because it never has any plot implications. The only exception to this is Anger, who in his first scene has “FLAMES burst out of his head.” This then becomes a recurring gag and ultimate plot point in the climax.
This is still a screenplay, and films are a visual medium, but being for an animated medium gives the writer’s a freedom to be less meticulous in the seen visuals and focus instead on the emotional visuals.
Okay, this was a slightly rambling article, but I had to get all these thoughts out of my head. I loved watching Inside Out, I think it’s a near-perfect work of art. When I read the script with the intention of writing a report, I expected to find the movie on the page, what I found instead wasn’t a work of art, but a near-perfect work of craft.
