Cinematographer Adam Habib on the Cinematic Inspirations Behind ‘Inside Out 2’

If Pixar’s Inside Out captured the adolescent experience of processing a life-changing cross country move, then Inside Out 2 promises to show audiences “what it means to be young and growing up” and how more complex emotions navigate the complications of life.

I joined a group of select journalists to visit the Pixar campus in Emeryville, CA to talk to the animators, editors, production designers, and story artists that helped make the sequel possible. In our interview with cinematographer Adam Habib, we chat about how films like Blue Valentine and Uncut Gems served as the inspiration for the highly anticipated sequel.

Inside Out 2 follows newly minted teenager Riley and the five emotions that help her navigate life. While Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust thought everything was running smoothly, unexpected changes require new, more complex emotions like Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment to join headquarters and help Riley adjust to her inevitably complicated life.

At Pixar, Habib taught us the nuances of operating a virtual camera in a physical space. For instance, you can film in a tight space and exclude walls so that the image on screen can appear wide. There’s no need to “take a wrecking ball” to widen the physical space. However, there are some drawbacks to using virtual camera. “You would be surprised, you’re actually are kind of limited because of the rendering system now is what they call physically based, meaning the cameras actually shooting rays of light to bounce back and say, ‘how would this light behave given this scene that I give you,'” he said.

Habib said they had ways of cheating the focus and used the technique on the Cars films where the mouth is way in front of the eyes and they would expand the focus so that the mouth and eyes stay in focus while the background stays blurry. However, that cannot be accomplished with the new Physically Based Rendering.

The first Inside Out used two different camera languages and lens distortion to differentiate between the two worlds. By implementing this technique, the film clearly defines the human world, the outside, where the camera is imperfect and flawed, and the world inside the mind, where it is imaginative, virtual, and perfect. For the former, the camera language is meant to capture the feeling of what it’s like to be a human. “So we follow the action, and you see a little bit of that imperfection that you get out of when humans do anything.”

INSIDE OUT 2 – BELIEF SYSTEM – In Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” Joy keeps track of Riley’s belief system—she’s determined to protect Riley’s Sense of Self and help her stay the same happy kid she knows and loves. Featuring Amy Poehler as the voice of Joy, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

“The mind world is like a virtual or perfect, still grounded in physics, but it moves very mechanically, very smoothly, like a screen or a dolly if you’re familiar with those terms from live action,” Habib said. “So the idea is that the audience really quickly knows where they are. Am I in Riley’s world or am I with Joy?”

Habib recalled how Pixar CCO and Inside Out director Pete Docter asked what kind of film had dueling camera languages and visual stories while still being cohesive without it being distracting. Without missing a beat, Habib told him Blue Valentine starring Ryan Gosling. “Obviously, we picked that work appropriate scene from that movie. If you remember in the film, there’s the past, which is shot on on film, 16mm. And then there’s the present, which is shot on digital,” he said. “If you go down the list with that movie, like every single thing is different, so much that they actually have two different gaffers. One person did the lighting for the past, that one did the present.”

Docter was on board with the idea seeing how the two camera styles didn’t add to the confusion or make it feel like it was a different movie, but rather it added layers to it. “The interesting thing, like in Blue Valentine, the more you intercut, the more visual intensity you kind of build up by playing those styles off each other,” Habib said. “So, I think that was actually appealing to him.”

Another film that would help inspire the look and feel of Inside Out 2 is Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. “In Uncut Gems, they have two different camera styles: for one for when they’re in the front of the shop, and another one for when they’re in the back. One is handheld when a Steadicam anyway, we use that as inspiration.”

One of the things about Inside Out 2 that distinguishes itself from its predecessor while using the same techniques is how it has to widen the scope to make room for the growing cast and the vastness of the human mind. The team used anamorphic lenses to add to the imperfections of the look of Riley’s world. Contrast that with the inside of Riley’s mind, the team used a different camera language for Anxiety. We wanted to have a language for when anxiety is inside driving, and what’s how that feels to ride on the outside. When the camera is focused on Anxiety, things are a little bit sharper and there are wider angle lenses when up close to the orange emotion.

The voice cast includes Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri, Lilimar, Grace Lu, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Paul Walter Hauser, and Yvette Nicole Brown

Directed by Kelsey Mann, using a script penned by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein and story by Mann and LeFauve, Inside Out 2 opens in theaters on June 14, 2024.

We’re also sharing the debut of a brand-new Dolby Cinema poster, which features Riley and the five original emotions Joy, Sadness, Envy, Anger, and Fear inside her head, as well as the newly unveiled characters Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui.