I got an early preview of In Your Dreams and sat in on a worldbuilding masterclass that let me dive deeper into the film. Guided by VFX Supervisor Nikki Lavender and Production Designer Steve Pilcher, the session unpacked how the movie’s dreamscapes are designed to feel playful, navigable, and emotionally precise.
In Your Dreams‘ Breakfast Town Has Rules, Not Just Gags
Production Designer Steve Pilcher set the tone with a blunt proof of concept.
“Anyway, breakfast town.”
The team knew a single visual pun would not carry a sequence, so they established constraints that keep the environment readable and cinematic.
“So we decided to make sure That’s the evil town. We made a little set up parameter. So we said, okay, we can’t have the buildings made of food.”
By removing the most obvious choice, the designers forced themselves to find smarter connections. Breakfast Town reads as a city first and a joke second, which is why it holds up as a space the characters can actually inhabit.
Market Lanes, Sand Logic, And Material Reality
The dream realms look whimsical, but they are engineered to behave. Pilcher described how visuals are backed by simple physical truths so the imagery never floats away from meaning.
“3 minutes, and then it falls down, which is kind of like we decided today. These glass is compatible with the sand if you melt sand you get glass so that’s part of the concept too.”
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Even a fantasy market or a collapsing set piece is grounded in cause and effect, which lets lighting, VFX, and animation interact in a believable way. When surfaces behave like materials we know, the dream logic feels intuitive rather than random.
Population Design That Feels Alive
Dream cities need citizens. The team chose clear, simple shapes that read instantly on screen and multiply without visual noise.
“It’s going to populated really fast so you’ll see a lot of eggs, especially when they’re running away.”
Crowd strategy here is part comedy, part clarity. Repeating a bold silhouette lets animators stage action cleanly while giving the audience a memorable motif that can scale from a few figures to a stampede.
From Breakfast Town To Broccoli Forest in In Your Dreams
Worldbuilding is iterative, and In Your Dreams leans into the delight of escalation. Pilcher traced how one area evolved from a throwaway detail into a full biome.
“We’re the little boy city, but we had that bushy box into that window, well, that eventually between the block before us and we built the whole broccoli forest.”
A tossed-off direction becomes geography. Geography becomes mood. Mood becomes story. By the time the heroes cross into the Broccoli Forest, the gag has transformed into a place with shape language, color strategy, and stakes.
Color Is The Map From Whimsy To Dread
When the tour leaves delight and heads toward danger, the palette tells you first. Pilcher explained how nightmare sequences telegraph the shift long before the plot says so.
“It change again, whatever so to your point, just in a nutshell. It has something to go into a nightmare. Usually we’ll start to drain the color out.”
Pulling saturation and value guides the eye, heightens tension, and keeps the geography legible. The result is a visual grammar that lets audiences feel where they are in the story before a single line is spoken.
Why These Cities Work
Breakfast Town works because it is governed by constraints that push the team beyond the easy joke. The market streets work because materials obey rules that lighting and VFX can honor. The crowds work because shape language is simple and scalable. Broccoli Forest works because an idea is allowed to grow into architecture. And the entire dream atlas holds together because color and value teach you how to read the terrain.
The film’s surreal cities are not just vivid. They are navigable, memorable, and precise. That is why In Your Dreams can swing from whimsy to menace without losing you on the map.
In Your Dreams premieres November 14, exclusively on Netflix. The countdown to chaos, heart, and hilarious deli-fueled dreams has officially begun.
About In Your Dreams
Release date: Coming this Fall
Director: Alex Woo
Co-Director: Erik Benson
Producers: Timothy Hahn, p.g.a., Gregg Taylor, p.g.a.
Screenplay by: Erik Benson and Alex Woo
Story by: Alex Woo and Stanley Moore
Music by: John Debney
Animation Studio: Kuku Studios
Cast: Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, Elias Janssen, Craig Robinson, Simu Liu, Cristin Milioti, Omid Djalili, Gia Carides, SungWon Cho, Zachary Noah Piser
Synopsis
In Your Dreams is a comedy adventure that follows Stevie and her brother Elliot as they journey into the absurd landscape of their own dreams. If the siblings can withstand a snarky stuffed giraffe, zombie breakfast foods, and the queen of nightmares, the Sandman will grant them their ultimate dream come true…the perfect family.
Are you excited to visit Breakfast Town? Would you eat the residents? And do you suddenly want some french toast? Let me know in the comments or @me!
KEEP READING: In Your Dreams Dares to Ask, “What If Dreams Don’t Come True?”
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