One of my favorite Disney movies so far is Pixar's newest production, "Inside Out." The movie was very interesting in how it explained the way we perceive emotions, thoughts and memories in our brains. What I found interesting in the film was the way they used color to show emotions, both inside Riley's head and in her own life.
The first thing to note about the film is that there are five main emotions: joy, anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Each emotion is a character with their own color that they are paired with. Joy is connected to a bright yellow; sadness, a deep blue; disgust, a sickly green; fear a light lavender and anger, a blazing red. Each of these colors is used when representing different memories that are colored to the emotion that Riley links to a memory. Certain memories that are important to Riley in the movie are called “core memories.” They shine brighter than the usual memories show in the film and are essential when defining who Riley is as a person.
At one point in the film, the memories fall out of the container they are kept in and the parts of her mindset that are powered by these memories turn gray and shut down. The lack of color is opposite to what we have seen before in the movie so far. When these different parts of Riley's head turn gray, they shut down. This colorless theme is seen elsewhere in the film at different parts. One of the aspects is the memories that are stored in long-term memory. As Riley gets older, some memories turn gray and are thrown out because their shine has dulled. The lack of color fits in the same way when Riley outgrows these memories. They aren’t important to her, and she forgets them.
The colorless theme can also be seen outside Riley’s head, as well. When she and her family pull up to the house, it looks dirty and gray. Riley stands in what is to be her room, a little girl in brightly colored clothes surrounded by dull, gray walls. The colors are used further to show that she is in an environment she is unfamiliar with and doesn’t know how to respond as a result. Other examples of the use of color in Riley’s life are when she is Skyping her one friend. On Riley’s end, everything is dull and gray, but her friend is in a brightly colored room. The contrast between the two places shows where Riley feels comfortable and emotionally active and where she does not. As the film goes on and Riley prepares to run away, everything in her life seems bleak and colorless. It isn’t until the end of the film, when Joy and Sadness arrive, that color restores to Riley’s life. As she sits on the bus that’s about to depart, there is a flash of color, and the scene seems to light up with different colors that we didn’t see before. This scene further shows the use of color in the film and how much it can be used to influence to film or tone of a scene.
