When we are dealing with film music, it is not the whole musical composition, but the film that is the totality. This quote from Peter Larson, taps into something undeniable about film music. That the score for a film is part of a greater whole. Yes, you can listen to and analyse it in isolation, but something happens when you place music in the context of a film, and when you consider the effect it has on the whole work of art.
But how do you begin to approach analysing a film from this holistic point of view? And if you did? What would it look like? And what film could you analyze? Inside Out has, I believe, a score and narrative that are as close to flawless as you can get, and its use of recognizable thematic musical content lent itself perfectly to a visual approach to analysis.
Inside Out is built around a three-act structure, with each act comprising a number of key narrative moments. Like the uprooting of Riley's family from Minnesota in Act 1, Joy getting trapped in the memory dump in Act 2, and the return home for both Joy and Riley in Act 3. To understand the narrative as a whole then, we can plot these events on a linear scale, giving us an ability to take in the structure of the film at a glance. And it's from this graphical approach that we can begin to understand the structure of Michael Giacchino's score.
Let's first think about when music is actually heard. What's noticeable straight away is that despite there being a lot of music in Inside Out, there are significant periods when it's absent. These moments are ones of diegetic silence, where music has been removed but the ambient noise of the world remains. This silence not only marks the absence of Riley's emotional clarity at these points, Maybe it's nice on the inside.
but also amplifies the importance of times when music is heard. Closing in! Hey! Oh no, you're-As Michelle Shion puts it, Silence is never a neutral emptiness. It is the negative of sound we've heard beforehand or imagined.
It is the product of contrast. And Inside Out uses this contrast for both comic and dramatic effect. Hello? Wait!
You're kidding. No, of course I'm not kidding. Ah, ah, stall for me.
Wait, but for the most part, the sound world is built around Michael Giacchino's score. So let's break this score down. The music contains multiple ideas, but there are three themes which can be considered primary material. The main theme, Joy's music. A secondary theme.
and Sadness'theme. The melody of the main theme is used surprisingly little. There's just over 4 and a half minutes of it in 85 minutes of total music.
Mostly then, this theme is heard without the melody and just its harmony, an alternating sequence of major 7th chords. But if we take a look at the keys used for each rendition, when we do hear the melody, we notice something straight away. A tonal design for the music. When Joy is in the headquarters before Riley moves away from Minnesota, the main theme sticks in its home key, G major. But after Joy and Sadness are thrown out of headquarters, We won't hear a G major version until the lead-in to Act 3. In the second act we hear it in F sharp major.
Then C major, with an altered harmony underneath. And finally, in A major, but this time superimposed on top of the harmony from Sadness'theme. Even as Joy tries to escape the memory dump, And we hear the G major version for the first time since the end of Act 1. It doesn't stay in its home key, moving to G and Bb minor, with a new minor modal melody. To suggest that they might not actually make it, that they might not succeed.
But as they make it back to headquarters, the melody returns to G major, where it began. completing the tonal journey of the theme. Although this idea begins and ends inside out, its near lack of transformation of the course of the story suggests a returning to a previous state instead of a development. So instead, it's left to the other primary ideas, the secondary theme and Sadness's theme, to provide the emotional weight in the score.
The secondary idea with its uplifting melody, is used in Act 1 to recall the happiest moments in Riley's early life, but is turned on its head when Joy is furthest away from home, when she realises everything she has lost, but also when she realises the importance of sadness in adding meaning to moments of happiness. This is clearly a central idea in the film. It was the day the prairie dogs lost the big playoff game. Marley missed a winning shot, she fell off. And suggests that looking at how Sadness'music is used throughout might tell us something more about the emotional message of the story.
We are introduced to her music early on, usually played comically, but it becomes a significant part of the score towards the end of Act 1. A point at which in a traditional three-act structure we would meet the mentor. This archetypal role of the mentor will be developed in two key ways. Sadness will help Joy navigate their way home, and she will provide comfort to someone who has experienced significant loss. And in both of these moments, we hear Sadness's music. Whereas the main theme, through its tonal design and sporadic use in Act 2, tells us of the physical separation between our protagonists and their home.
Sadness's music, its development, increasing importance and more subtle treatment speaks of both Joy and Riley's changing attitudes. After they return to headquarters, Joy realizes that Sadness is the only one who can fix things. And as she does, we hear her music fully developed.
Gone is the comical nature of its early renditions, replaced instead by a warm reading, accompanied by a soft counter melody in strings. We realise now that sadness is important not in and of itself, but because it's the thing which makes the joy found after loss or heartbreak even more profound. Sadness is, after all, never a neutral emptiness.
It's the negative of joy we've felt beforehand and that we will feel again. When you combine a score with a film, something happens. Something changes where both music and visuals are enhanced, and the story is made even more vivid. It is so difficult though to put into words why this happens. Words often fail to do justice to the feeling you get when you watch and listen to something for the first time that is as effortlessly beautiful as Inside Out.
But by looking at the film and score with this new visual language, by placing the music within the context of the narrative, it at least helps us get closer to understanding the magical interplay between music and story. We can see at a glance how the music changes, how it works with the narrative, and as a result, we can begin to understand music's ability to transform. to make a story, its characters, and our emotions come alive. Thank you so much for watching.
I am hugely grateful to Andrew Simmons, who very kindly allowed me to use his research on Inside Out, including his painstakingly produced graphics for this essay. I thoroughly recommend you read the whole of his article using the link in the description below, and take a look at his website to find out more about his work. If you enjoyed this video, Do watch my essay on Pixar's Up, linked here, and if you want to get behind the scenes content and early access to all my new videos, follow the link to my Patreon account in the description.
See you next time.