While visiting Pixar in March, I got to see the first half-hour of Inside Out 2 — opening in theaters one month from today, June 14th. For this Animation Scoop Q&A, here are my conversations with editor Maurissa Horwtiz and DP, Camera Adam Habib. (These interviews were combined and edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: Maurissa, what’s interesting about the 30 minutes of footage I’ve seen is the back and forth movement — from Riley to inside the mind and having these new characters. How much of a challenge was putting all that together?

Maurissa Horwitz: Definitely balancing the storylines in this movie is the biggest challenge for editorial. The fun of the movie is the emotions. You want to be with the emotions as much as you can. Something that we found with this movie, in contrast to the first one, is that a lot of the situations are social situations. To really land the emotions, and the best thing for the story and for Riley, is to spend a little more time with her than we did in the first one. But we’re still very aware of the balance and wanting to experience as much as we could of Riley through the emotions. To be honest, after every screening we would have of this movie, I would go back and watch the first one just to keep in mind the visual language and how they really crafted the edit of the first one. That was always with me in my head as I was moving forward.

JM: You rewatched the first film, which is beloved by generations. You had teens then who are in their mid-20s. You had kids then who are in their teens now. How do you want this to speak to them?

MH: What I love about this movie so much is that it is so universal. These emotions are all experiences we’ve had at every age. I very much connected to my inner adolescent as I was making this movie. It’s so relatable. What the first one did so beautifully is allow a space for people to start talking about emotions. What I’m hoping is that, whether it’s teens talking to other teens or parents talking to their kids, it provides an easy way to have conversations about the emotions and what you’re going through without feeling awkward or weird or you have to hide it. We all have these feelings.

JM: How difficult can it be to decide which lines of dialogue to use, and which to reject, knowing the talent that you have — and that the mouths have to be animated in a certain way?

MH: It’s always harder to change dialogue after animation has started. Our goal is always to get those performances locked in before animation has touched it. Part of being an editor is being decisive, and then having a director who’s also decisive. Being at the sessions and seeing what’s working and not working as we’re playing with it and having the picture in mind… our cast is so talented. Wealth all around. (laughs) A bounty of choices. All of moviemaking is choices.

Jackson Murphy and Maurissa Horowitz

JM: You also worked on “Nimona”. With that movie and this one, it’s strong female lead characters. What does that mean to you — especially with the impact “Nimona” has had and this film is going to have?

MH: To be honest, I feel so lucky that I got to be a part of both of these projects. I feel so emotionally connected to both of those stories. And helping them to get to the world means so much to me. I’m so proud. With “Inside Out 2”, I love that Riley’s a female athlete. You don’t get to see that a lot in animation. Both these movies can talk to everyone, and they’re so worth telling. Important stories that should be out in the world.

JM: Adam, you were also the DP on “Onward”. Both “Onward” and “Inside Out 2” have emotions at their cores. Was there a mirror of an experience for you between those two films?

Adam Habib: Really different, honestly. “Onward” was my first feature, so you’re adapting to that airspace and all the things you want to do. And you learn a ton of things. You’re like, “I won’t make that mistake again.” And then you make a whole bunch of new mistakes. I knew going in on this movie that having come through “Onward” and recognizing that it was the layout team and my team of filmmakers and my relationship with the other supervisors and the director — that’s what got us through it. You have ups and downs in the world of filmmaking. They were important. I really wanted to protect them and honor them as much as I could.

Jackson and Adam Habib

JM: You said [in our presentation] you wanted “to fill the space and immerse the audience”. When you approach a movie like this with a bunch of characters, and wanting to make the experience visually interesting for people, how complex can that get?

AH: (laughs) Good question. We have such a fun cast of characters, but we didn’t want to exhaust the audience by constantly having nine emotions to look at or check in with. So I think it was often about… like a piece of music — If you want something to sound really loud, get quiet right before it. If you want a shake… a boom… to hit really hard, maybe the camera gets really still just before it. It was about trying to find places to subtract so that the moments of seeing all nine emotions together, for example, stuck out or had an impact.

JM: When people think about Pixar, you had the first “Toy Story”, then “A Bug’s Life”, and then “Toy Story 2” with that “When She Loved Me” scene. That was the starting point of, “Alright, here’s how emotion in a Pixar movie can really, really make you feel.” What do you think is the secret to emotional success in a Pixar movie?

AH: That’s a really good question. What’s at the heart of it is an honest question from the filmmakers that they want to know the answer to, and that’s almost what inspires one of these stories. Like Pete [Docter] talking about the first “Inside Out”. Something changed in his daughter, and he wanted to know why. What was that? In this movie, being a teenager in the world today is really hard. Why is that? That was what was driving us to dig into this character of Anxiety and some of the things that Riley goes through. Michael Arndt had a talk he gave about “Toy Story 3” and how he approached that story. He talked about how the villain in that movie, Lotso, has a philosophy that makes sense superficially. “Well, if kids throw toys away, that means that they don’t love toys.” Your hero has a philosophy that’s a little bit more poetic… not what’s on the surface. Woody in that movie is like, “Just because you’re not together doesn’t mean that love doesn’t exist.” Searching for that level of a little bit of poetic meaning that wouldn’t just occur to you when you first stop to think about a subject, is what can help add to the emotional depth of the movie.

JM: It’s been nine years since the first “Inside Out”. When you look back on “Inside Out 2” in nine years, what do you want a core memory to be?

AH: Seeing the first film and how it had an impact in the culture and allowed people to talk about what we would think of as negative emotions — but the purpose of them and how they help us in some ways — that has been a really cool thing to be a part of. If we were to be so lucky to have something like that happen again, to make a little dent in the culture, that would be great. But for me, the core memory is gonna be this incredible crew and team that I got to work with.

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Jackson Murphy

Jackson Murphy is a movie critic and entertainment columnist. He is the creator of the website Lights-Camera-Jackson.com, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.

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