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!" (common dreams) appear along the walls. A notable actor residing there is Rainbow Unicorn. Dream Productions enters in activity at night and/or when Riley sleeps. 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, and wake Riley when necessary, but Emotions cannot disconnect or turn off the projector.
Inside Out[]
Riley's mind workers make 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 seen on the old house pops up on screen and dies instantly (because it was dead when it was seen), followed by an anthropomorphic bear who delivers broccoli pizza, which Riley hates. Joy, who is on dream duty, dislikes this so much that she cuts the projector off, even though doing so is against the Dream Duty rules; she could have woken up Riley instead.
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 with a dream so they can use the Train of Thought, since the train only operates when Riley is awake. 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 was on Dream Duty for the day). On the screen (what Riley and the Emotion on Dream Duty see), it looks like cut meat, but in reality, the Emotions are seen.
However, Bing Bong gets arrested in a soft balloon cage, 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, and he immediately presses the button to get Riley up, causing her to wake up, very scared.
Trivia[]
- Many of the posters are direct parodies of real life film posters. The poster for "I'm Falling for a Very Long Time Into a Pit" is very similar to the poster for Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller, Vertigo.
- Apparently, dreams produced in DP have names, just like movies.
- The font of the word "Dream" from Dream Productions and the gate are ironically references to the Paramount Pictures gate.
- When the dreams are being played, it is the role of one of the emotions every day to watch them (in case she dreams that day) and wake Riley up if they are too extreme in nature, very scary or if it was a nightmare. 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, and he is the expert in waking Riley up if it is a scary dream.