The Big Picture

Andrea Datzman discusses her experience working on
Inside Out 2
and the unique sound creation process.
She used various musical influences to create distinct sounds for inside and outside of Riley’s mind.
Datzman reflects on being the first woman to score a Pixar feature film and the importance of diverse representation in the film industry.

Inside Out 2 is a story about feeling. It explains how our emotions can change who we are as people and how we need to properly balance that spectrum instead of bottling those feelings inside. Movies, in general, are all about feeling as well. The opening scene of Up, Andy’s goodbye in Toy Story 3, and the new sense of life in Wall-E are incredible moments that stick with us over a decade later. A lot goes into making a film, but one of the most important is the film score. Music, like movies, is inherently emotional. Whether that be a beat that gets you ready for the gym or lofi that helps relax you, music has a massive effect on us.

Making sure we feel emotions such as Joy, Sadness, and Disgust while also introducing new ones like Anxiety is a tall task. How can you maintain the identity of Inside Out’s score (originally done by Michael Giacchino) while ensuring the sound evolves alongside Riley? Those are only a few challenges that composer Andrea Datzman faced while working on this film. In this interview, we sat down for a lengthy conversation about the making of Inside Out 2’s incredible score, the balance of rock and orchestral sounds, and making history as the first female composer to work on a Pixar feature film.

Inside Out 2 Follow Riley, in her teenage years, encountering new emotions.Release Date June 14, 2024 Director Kelsey Mann Writers Meg LeFauve Studio(s) Pixar Animation Studios Distributor(s) Disney Expand

The Differences Between TV and Theatrical Movies

MIKE THOMAS: I wanted to talk to you about this movie because this is your first feature film in 12 years, I want to say?

ANDREA DATZMAN: This is, yeah. My first theatrical feature release [as composer].

What was that experience like, and how impactful was it being Inside Out 2? I know you worked on the first one.

DATZMAN: I’ve worked on many films in different capacities, so it was an easy changeover for me. Especially having worked on TV for years, it was stepping into very comfortable shoes. You get some pretty amazing skills working quickly and succinctly when you’re working on a weekly TV show. It’s, “What is the most important? What can we get the most emotional impact from? What is important to you as far as the storytelling specificity?” And let everything else go. When you transfer that to this feature medium, it’s a wonderful, not leisurely pace — I would not say that [laughs] — but the amount of subtlety that I was able to spend time playing with, that was wonderful because it allowed me to be very nuanced in different ways that I had a lot of fun with because then you create this huge library of things that you can play with in different ways.

I’m sure having a little bit more time allows you to get a lot more creative as opposed to TV.

DATZMAN: Absolutely. And the wind up for it, also. I like to spend some time just playing with my themes beforehand, seeing what they can do in different ways when you throw them in different contexts, like, “Oh, that actually works as a small snippet here, and I can take that and flip it on its side.”

How Riley’s Growth Changes The Approach to ‘Inside Out 2’

I wanted to talk about you crafting those themes because you’re coming into Inside Out 2, and we know that Michael Giacchino did the first film. Was it hard trying to find that balance of maintaining what he already created and that signature sound of the first film while also infusing your own voice into it?

DATZMAN: No, I had the best experience with this. Michael is primarily a storyteller, that is his first priority. So in this, it was use that original theme, use that original style where it’s appropriate for the story, and then everywhere else look at it from a fresh perspective. We’ve collaborated a lot. He understands my instincts and style very well, as do I, so he had a lot of trust, and he was excited to figure out and hear where I would go with it. I think you put on this sort of musical suit when you decide to go into any world, and you walk around in that. So, I put on some of that, but the landscape has changed in Riley, so it didn’t require me to just stay there. I was encouraged to, and found inspiration immediately to go, “Okay, Riley’s on the ice and could get chucked around and smacked around.” Hockey is scary! So, it was getting a very visceral sound there and then figuring out what that meant as far as scoring with heavy drums and then getting really specific to each hit, so you really felt like she might trip over herself. But then also there was a lot of fertile story ground for new themes where I couldn’t have used the original theme there, or if I did, it would have lost its impact for where it really deserved to be, which, for me, that became evident that it is the theme for Joy and Riley together, that connection when Joy is in control in the Joyest joy. [Laughs]

I’m glad you mentioned that things have changed. Riley is older and she has new emotions, so how much fun was it crafting new themes around Anxiety and these new characters that are introduced and how that kind of changes things?

DATZMAN: One internal character really is Riley. It’s the sense of self, it’s Riley’s sense of self and her core beliefs. That was the first one that felt very important to me, very tender and like it had the ability to go everywhere. That sense of self, which then you get this sort of core theme, or in its major view, and then the sense that the sense of self is made up out of core beliefs. So, having that broken down also into the core beliefs theme, which when you listen to it, you get this succinct thing, but then when you listen to the core beliefs theme, it’s each part of it in these different ways. Then that can be used throughout the film in an evolutionary way as her core beliefs are getting all messed with down there, and getting infused with, for better or worse, all the parts of her.

Making Anxiety’s Presence Felt
Image via Disney

But that motif still carries through each time.

DATZMAN: Yeah, and it’s in these different, broken-down forms. And then, for each one of the new emotions, I really wanted it to be like a feeling feeling. I grew up dancing, not well, but it was a part of my early musical education. So, when I’m writing, oftentimes if I’m stuck, I really think, like, “Alright, what does this scene feel like? What does this emotion feel like?” So, one like Ennui was actually difficult because Ennui feels like, “I don’t care. I don’t want to.” [Laughs] So, I really had to push myself to do that one.

But Anxiety felt like it told me what it is. It was something that zaps you, like, gets your attention and then keeps your attention, right? Like a tap on the shoulder in different ways. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,” and then sort of sweet talking you into believing it again and again and again, in all these different ways. That became very versatile, as anxiety does, right? It comes in all these different forms, and it tricks you into listening to it in different ways. Sometimes it’s militaristic, sometimes it’s really subtle, and in a way that gets sort of harmonized with other things. It lent itself really well to the climax where I got to break it down and just leave that alarm sense on, that repeated note, playing over and over and over again. And then I ran that through a bunch of different effects processors, so everything playing there is just that, and then that ran through all these different things, so it sounds an electric wire fizzing out or echoing on itself. It’s very haunting, and then you get the inside, vulnerable statement of what anxiety is really trying to say on this plucked piano in this way where you’re just like, “Oh my gosh, I can tell how much she cares and how she’s just lost it!”

It’s very effective because I felt myself watching this movie, and I felt my heart racing, and then I felt it slowing down as the music and the scene kind of winds down. It was intense, and so it was very effective.

DATZMAN: It was difficult to watch that. At one point, I thought about asking them to send me a cut without watching Riley smack herself in the head because it was just heartbreaking. It was like, “Oh, honey, no!” And the heartbeat speeding up, it did cause a lot.

I almost felt like I myself was having a panic attack. That’s how effective it was.

DATZMAN: I’m sorry because I did while I was writing it. Just like a good old two-day-long one. So, that translated. But I also felt like I had a great responsibility within that, that they could tell me that it was too intense, but that I had to start with it being very authentic. I wasn’t thinking about it intellectually at that point in the way that I just described it as being broken down. It was just like, “No, it just feels like this!” We can get all intellectual about the things we got anxious about earlier later, but in the time when you are frozen like that, it is just that message coming through that is totally distorted, and you’re frozen.

The Shifts in Musical Identity
Image via Pixar

I wanted to talk to you about the different types of music that you use in this film. Of course, we have the orchestral themes that you use, but we also have a lot of alt-rock and punk in this film, as well. What was it like crafting the sound around all of that because you had a lot of different tools at your disposal, and it really made the inside and outside of Riley’s mind feel very distinct?

DATZMAN: I needed there to feel like a sense of physical stakes out there because hockey’s intense. So while I was thinking of first how to do it, and when I first watched the film, the director said, “We want this to smash in on Pixar, like, ‘This isn’t what you were expecting.’” You’ve got this lovely theme, and “Oh, we’re going back to Riley’s world, and… What is going on? Wait, what?” So, getting that smash into a hard guitar solo was like, “We’re going somewhere else right now. The setting has changed.”

As I was considering how to do this, I went out roller skating last summer to this monthly park skate in Burbank. They do a themed one, and it was Barbie versus Barbed Wire. [Laughs] We got all dressed up. It was so funny. The DJ was awesome. As I was there skating, and I hadn’t in years, and I’m trying not to fall over myself, the DJ is playing stuff that makes me remember roller derby. Not that I’ve spent time playing it a lot myself, but I have watched a lot of it and I’ve got cousins who are awesome at it, and that’s some spinout and hurt yourself stuff. The way that it made my body feel as I was going around and around was like, “This feels like you’re flying,” especially when you get those rockabilly drums going. So, I got very specific on how I wanted the drum hits to work.

There’s that term when you’re scoring something and you get really specific mimicking what the action looks like on the screen called Mickey Mousing. Carl Stalling did a lot of that in Looney Tunes, hitting things very specifically, and I had some real fun with doing that on this score. I did it in that first scene with the drums quite a bit where, when I was writing it in the demo, I got very specific with where each hit was gonna go, so it felt like she might trip over herself. Then I showed the drummer that scene, and I said, “Alright, so that plus amp it up. Lose control even more. Swing it out more so it really feels like she might crash into the wall.” The whole thing made it feel like there was a sense of stakes, but there was also a sense of posturing, like pump up, amp up music.

Again, it’s very effective because, like you said, that opening moment hits you right away. I think it does help recontextualize the film a lot where it’s like, “Yeah, Riley is becoming a different person than when we last saw her.” It’s very evident. And the score of it also, once we retreat back into her mind, we see demolition and new emotions show up, and it’s like, “Okay, we hit the ground running. I can’t wait to see where this goes.”

DATZMAN: I’m glad. Awesome!

To the Surprise of No One, Riley is a Swiftie
Image by Annamaria Ward

With the alt-rock and punk influences, did you think about what Riley’s favorite band would be?

DATZMAN: Oh, yeah. I was definitely doing that. Already, I love film scores, I love listening to film scores, but I listen to a lot of different music. My playlist is not all classical and it’s not all any one thing. And so, I was thinking, “Well, she probably loves some Olivia Rodrigo.” Maybe not right at that point since Get Up and Glow is her favorite band right at the beginning. Maybe that’s a little more girl group. I’m gonna date myself too much if I say any of the girl groups I’m thinking of. [Laughs] But I was thinking about Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift and some of those. I’ve got a 14-year-old niece, and I was just checking in along with her the whole time going, “What do you like right now? What’s up?”

That’s actually very smart.

DATZMAN: But the thing is, she’d answer me like Ennui. She’d be like, “I don’t know, it’s fine. All music is good. I don’t care.” [Laughs] “Thanks. Helpful!”

Well, for what it’s worth, you can’t go wrong with Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift.

DATZMAN: You know what I got a lot of out of that, though, was the great mixing techniques that are, getting that really broad bass sound and high highs, like bright high, which just feels like it makes so much room for an emotional experience in the middle, I guess.

The Weight of Making History at Pixar
Image via Pixar

I did want to ask you about working with Pixar and becoming the first woman to score a Pixar feature film. Did you feel the pressure of that, or was it just another day at the office for you?

DATZMAN: What’s wonderful is, I hadn’t even thought about it. I’m lucky for that, but I guess I didn’t feel the pressure of it. What I always think is you want the right person for the job, and I felt uniquely qualified for this job, having worked on the first film, having worked so much with Pixar. I felt really connected with [director] Kelsey [Mann]. We had a really good pairing, and we were gonna do something together that he would be really happy with. I felt like I could help translate that. So, that was priority to me. If I didn’t feel like there was a good connection with Kelsey, I’d feel like I’m not the right person for it.

But it ended up meaning a lot to me in the end because, like I said, you want the right person for the job. The more diversity that we can have in who is telling stories, the more people that will be inspired to think that they can come into this field and feel good and feel like it’s not just a push-through. Like, if I can represent hard work that looks like this way and fun that looks one way and it inspires somebody to come in, that makes me really happy. I didn’t take myself seriously as a composer when I was young at all. Maybe it was a small-town thing, but there weren’t a lot of models for me. It wasn’t until I got into college. And I hadn’t thought I was gonna be a composer. I thought I was going in for a piano major, and it turned out I was not that great at piano. My technique stunk because I was going to practice and writing, and I just hadn’t given myself credit for that. So, as soon as I was there in college and in a composition class, they said, “Well, you’re in the major, right? Because clearly you are a composer, and you write a lot.” It was like, “Oh. Oh!” So, I think that the more voices and experiences that we can bring to this, the more people we can inspire, and then we will get better and better stories.

I will say, Andrea, you are an inspiration. I mean, you just scored a billion-dollar film. That is impressive, to say the least.

DATZMAN: And unexpected. [Laughs] You’re just hoping that you’re able to make somebody connect with something, and then for it to do well like this is unexpected and inspiring because it can be so easy to get pulled into the fear of everything going on with headlines all the time. The message in this movie is really one that represents the good, the good guys, and the good guys is just compassion for ourselves and positive communication and healthy self-development. To have those headlines to me is a way of telling the world, “Positivity and good storytelling, supporting artists can win, and it’s worth investing our time and money in,” which is really important, too, for a company like Pixar, which is incredible at how they support their artists. Disney and Pixar do it like not a lot do, and for them to have this positive experience, I think, is hopefully a great inspiration for models for more companies and storytellers.

Inside Out 2 is in theaters worldwide.

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