Well, what if we did this in the mind as opposed to the brain? So instead of blood vessels and dendrites, what if it was consciousness and dream production? And that would allow us to have characters that represent emotions. And that felt like, man, that's exactly what animation does best - strong, opinionated, caricatured personalities. And that just got me excited.

Well, the film initially - we had decided to pair joy with fear because I don't know about you - for me fear was a major motivator in junior high. So we thought there's probably some good stuff there... As the film went on, we had developed all these great scenes that were really funny, but in the third act, it wasn't adding up to anything.

So this idea of moving seemed like a good way to sort of represent that metaphorically. It also is something for me personally. When I was in fifth grade - so about 11 - my folks moved us to Denmark.

Every time you recall a memory, you're basically making another copy of it and at that same point it is susceptible to new changes and adaptations. So, you know, if you remember from when you were, you know, in second grade and there was Christmas and you got a present from your grandfather and your mom was wearing a red dress, that may or may not all have happened.

Yeah, to bring families together I need to go away.

It's like you run into this dark tunnel, trusting that somewhere there's another end to it where you're going to come out. And there's a point in the middle where it's just dark. There's no light from where you came in and there's no light at the other end; all you can do is keep running. And then you start to see a little light, and a little more light, and then, bam! You're out in the sun.

And it sort of hit me that the very subject matter of the film that I'm dealing with is the key to the most important thing in our lives, and that's our relationships. And so we had done all this research showing the job of each individual emotion, you know, fear keeps you safe. It deals with uncertainty.