However, for story reasons, we needed to represent them in certain ways. One of the things that sort of blew me away that I didn't know when we started is that memories are completely susceptible to change. And this is, you know, one of the many reasons why certain people are trying to get it taken out - eyewitness testimony in court cases because it's very unreliable.
Pete DocterWe actually needed the memory - if you see the film - as a very different kind of a plot device of revealing some information to our main character. So we chose to represent it as these sort of beautiful little snow globes, which kind of, weirdly, that's the way we think of memories - at least, most of the folks that we talked to. You think of these memories as being very pure and absolute and unchanging. That's not actually real life.
Pete DocterParents don't want their children to lose that purity and innocence of childhood. We want to bottle that and hold onto that, but it's impossible.
Pete DocterAnd it's about a three-month process every screening. And that way we have seven or eight chances at the film before we have to actually build the models, build the sets, do the animation and all of that. So it's a - I think that's a real key to the way we make films.
Pete DocterIf you were feeling sad right now and you recall a sad - or, a very happy memory from the past, it will be tinged with more sadness based on your current feeling. So we felt like that was actually on solid scientific ground .
Pete Docter