Dream productions logo
Dream Productions is a place in Riley's mind in Inside Out. Resembling a Hollywood studio, it is where dreams are made like movies. It features a monumental gate opening on two soundstages. Several posters from past productions such as "I Can Fly" or "Something is Chasing Me!" appear along the walls. A notable actor residing there is Rainbow Unicorn. Dream Productions enters in activity at night. The studio's producers draw inspiration from Riley's memories of the day to write a script for the Dream Director. The cameras have a "reality distortion filter" so that the Mind Workers acting the dream appear human. The dream is then filmed and projected live to Headquarters, where one Emotion stays on dream duty to watch and comment it.
Inside Out
Riley makes a dream on her first night after moving to San Francisco. The dream starts with the family car landing at San Francisco, where it suddenly turns into a nightmare as all the negative events of the day are recalled. Riley's new house appears as a haunted house, then a mouse pops up on screen and dies instantly, followed by an anthropomorphic bear who delivers pieces of broccoli pizza. Joy, who is on dream duty, dislikes this so much that she cuts the projector off, even though doing so is against the rules.
On their journey through Riley's mind back to Headquarters, Joy, Sadness and Bing Bong decide to go to Dream Productions to try to wake Riley up so they can use the Train of Thought. Joy proposes that they make Riley so happy that she wakes up, but because such a thing has never happened, Sadness thinks they should try to scare Riley to wake her up.
Nevertheless, they go with Joy's idea. Filming of the dream begins as an adaptation of Riley's presentation to her new class from earlier in the day in which she loses her teeth and has no pants on. Joy and Sadness disguised as a dog jump onstage and wreak havoc, trying to be as goofy as possible. Things quickly get out of hand however, as the dog costume tears in half, making it look like the dog got torn in two and started chasing its bottom. The sequence becomes so chaotic that it begins to frighten Fear (who is on dream duty).
However, Bing Bong gets arrested, and the dream regains some stability. It continues with a sequence with Rainbow Unicorn, until suddenly, Riley’s worst fear, Jangles, bursts in on the set. This scares Fear to death, causing Riley to wake up.
Trivia
- Many of the posters are direct parodies of real life film posters. The poster for "I'm Falling Into A Pit" is very similar to the poster for Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller, Vertigo.
- The font of the word "Dream" from Dream Productions and the gate are references to the Paramount Pictures gate.
- When the dreams are being played, it is the role of one of the emotions to watch them and wake Riley up if they are too extreme in nature. It is implied the role is rotated among the five emotions. This job is called "Dream Duty".
- Fear does not like being put on Dream Duty, not because of the scary nature of the job, but many of the dreams are unoriginal and have various stereotypical tropes, such as teeth falling out, and going to school with no pants on. Fear also likes to see if he can predict when a trope is about to happen.