1: Atmospheria Title Card (2021)
2: Blade Runner Title Card (1982)
3: Anamorphia Thumbnail (2019)

When deciding what to do after making Moving Ice, I originally planned on making a cheesy spy movie called "Flashbang". The script for Flashbang followed all the normal tropes found in 007 and Mission Impossible, and was getting boring to work on. While working on the script, I was rewatching the original Blade Runner from 1982, and the aesthetics of that movie held my attention much better than what I was working on, so I decided to shift focus entirely and just make a Neo-Noir Crime Thriller with lots of fog and neon lights.

The name came from the literary term "Atmosphere", which basically means a world that feels believable and real. You can feel the details, the lives people live, and the world that surrounds them and what it does to shape what they do. I wanted the city to become the primary character of the story, something that became the supporting grounds for everything that would happen. Foggy skies, neon lights, flying cars, tall rise buildings, and high tech gadgets from the future.

I also watched another movie called "Anamorphia", that was basically a glorified review of a camera lens called the Vizen 40mm 1.8x Anamorphic. The test footage was edited together like a proper movie, and the slow panning video of Pre-Covid Los Angeles was a big building ground for the style I wanted. The music was also god tier and got me introduced to Awlee.

While working on Atmospheria, I also took some queues from a movie called Se7en from 1995. It's an early David Fincher film and its got an awesome aesthetic to it that I wanted to copy for this movie to help get its influence away from just being a Blade Runner film.
I had originally wrote the script around Suypur's wife being kidnapped and killed by the Rat King similar to what happens in Seven, but because it broke Roblox's rules I had to edit out a section of the movie I had already finished making. And because I edited new sections to fill in what was missing, its impossible to add those scenes back in.

1: Atmospheria (2021)
2: Blade Runner (1982)
3: Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

For the opening scene, I directly copied the opening shots of both Blade Runner films. For the CineBlox Cinema release of the movie, I used Blade Runner 2049 music in combination with the original movies visual style, flying over a foggy city at night.

The disgusting yellow fog was mainly inspired by the fact that it does a good job of hiding background details and making my model city look large and imposing, but was inspired by real life snow storms over my town, where the glow of my village would reflect off the underside of the clouds and cast an eerie light, making it look brighter outside than normal.

I matched the opening title cards to a song called "2049", which is the first song from the Blade Runner 2049 original soundtrack composed by Hans Zimmer. While the song holds its own merit, it doesn't hold the same flame as Vangelis' beautiful score for the original Blade Runner. I named the city "Los Vangelis" in the honor of the composer, as well as cleverly combining the names "Los Angeles" and "Las Vegas".

1: Korb's first frame (Atmospheria 2021)
2: Deckard's first scene (Blade Runner 1982)
3: Korb ordering dumplings (Atmospheria 2021)
4: Deckard ordering dumplings (Blade Runner 1982)
5: Korb being arrested (Atmospheria 2021)
6: Deckard being arrested (Blade Runner 1982)

For the street scene where the audience is introduced to Korb and his world, I wanted to make it feel welcoming, but also foreign enough to make you know this is a richly multicultural city. This area is where Korb is his happiest throughout the movie (you can see in Korb's first frame, there is a neon green smiley face)

In the part where Korb is sitting under the covering while there's rain outside, we get the first indication that Korb can speak another language. This isn't taken into use again through the film, but still helps build up Korb as someone who's familiar with this environment.

You can notice between my shots and the ones from Blade Runner that I copied this entire sequence shot-for-shot, even copying a good portion of the original dialogue. There's still a clear difference in color style and design, with Atmospheria taking a soft and warm tone with prominent Oranges and Yellows, and Blade Runner taking a more cool tone with harsh Blues and Pinks. Director of Photography Jordan Cronenweth and his visual style was my building ground for these shots, but definitely not a strong basis for my color design.

It's when the other Atmospheria officers show up behind Korb that he starts to get alienated from his happy place, and it becomes increasingly clear through the dialogue and body language that Korb is feeling pressured, but trying to keep it cool and easy. I had the cops speak German to take another inspiration from the original sequence, with the cops from Blade Runner speaking "Cityspeak", a mishmash from multiple languages, mainly mixing American English and Japanese, with traces of many other languages.

Translation of the German special unit officer's dialogue says something like "Captain Xob says you must return to report before you retire." Translating the German dialogue won't add anything to the film, in fact, I made the dialogue superfluous like that on purpose so that your only clues on what he was saying had to be interpreted by either Korb or the Dumpling man.

1: Captain Xob's introduction (Atmospheria, 2021)
2: Captain Bryant's introduction (Blade Runner, 1982)
3: Xob introducing Korb to Suypur (Atmospheria, 2021)
4: Somerset wants Mills to be reassigned (Se7en, 1995)
5: Korb and Suypur working at desks (Atmospheria, 2021)
6: Somerset and Mills working at desks (Se7en, 1995)

The scene where we are introduced to Captain Xob and Sergeant Suypur is the scene where I break the path between my influence from Blade Runner and go into my influences from Se7en. This scene starts off like the Captains introduction from Blade Runner, but slowly twists into the captains introduction from Se7en.

We start by introducing the Captain, showing him to be arrogant and wanting the special unit officer back in on the job. But unlike Blade Runner, Korb doesn't stick around because he'll become "little people", he sticks around because he's brought in to train the new kid to the unit, who's already high spirted and slightly cocky to take the new job. Korb tries to help him get assigned to something easier, but Xob insists to Korb that this assignment is meant for them, and reminds him that if he gets it done, then he can leave.

Korb considers the risk of dealing with the Rat King, who he understands is a villianous monster thats difficult to deal with. Xob understands the risk aswell, but believes that Suypur is the answer to putting him away for good, making him work with Korb in order for the pair to track down and detain the crime lord.

Before they get to work, Suypur needs to finish some paperwork, so the two go to their desks and do some filing while they wait for orders. Suypur needs to finish his transfer paperwork from the homicide unit to the atmospheria unit, but gets a phonecall part way into his work from Sergeant Anderson, another Atmospheria Special Unit officer working in the field tracking the Rat King. Anderson is kept off screen the entire film for the reason that his work is only alluded to by the other officers, making him a central cog in the plan of arresting the Rat King.

Suypur is excited and impatient in getting to go out and arrest the Rat King. Korb tries to be the voice of reason and patience throughout this scene, aswell as the rest of the film. They both wait until tomorrow evening to recieve their detaining orders from the District Attorney, its only then that they go to the Club Aitherios in order to take down the notorious criminal.

1: Alleyway in front of club (Atmospheria, 2021)
2: Alleyway in front of club (Slice of Life, 2020)
3: Suypur goes into an empty club (Atmospheria, 2021)
4: Deckard goes into a packed club (Blade Runner, 1982)
5: Introduction to the Rat King (Atmospheria, 2021)
6: Rat King diving out the window (Atmospheria, 2021)
7: Suypur watching Rat King get away (Atmospheria, 2021)

In the scene before, we got to see Suypur in his home which was bland and depressing, out in the city is where Suypur is at his best. However even he gets surprised by Korb's ability to switch between a soft spoken and caring man to someone who's a force to be reckoned with.

Something I wanted to do from scene to scene is build a consistent color style depending on the characters surrounding environment. Yellow background scenes are more safe and welcoming, Purple and Red background scenes are more hostile and dangerous. Its a very subtle way of reminding the viewer of the changes between safe and dangerous situations throughout the film. You'll notice for this scene, the background is primarily shades of purple and red.

For the alleyway, I took a lot more inspriation from a fan made film called Slice of Life, which itself set in the Blade Runner universe. Not a lot of the film besides the overhead shot of the alleyway made it into the final cut of the movie.

The homeless man dumpster diving (Who I've nicknamed "Homeless Joe" in the script and in a cut scene), is an informant to the Rat King. He's clearing out the dumpster not because he's looking for things to eat/sell, but because he's making a soft landing pad for the Rat King to fall down later.

An unwritten rule of homeless culture says that if you find a matching pair of shoes while dumpster diving that aren't your size, you should leave them to the side for another homeless person to find and use. I wrote this into the script, but didn't really build on it besides the first few frames.

The original draft called for the club to be PACKED with people. Obviously this would've been impossible to do since I would've had to dress and move around hundreds of characters that weren't important to the story, so I ended up making the club empty, which adds to the impact of the scene. No one expects to walk into a club that's empty.

When Suypur walks into the Rat King's apartment, we're greeted with bright lights, clean furniture, and lots of open space. Polar opposite to Suypur's apartment from the previous scene, which was dimly lit by only a table lamp and random screens. He walks in and likes the look only to be greeted by the Rat King, sitting on a couch.

The Rat King escapes with good timing and a good distraction. When the Rat Kings right hand man Homeless Joe takes aim at Suypur, but Korb tackles him right before he shoots, saving Suypur, but the Rat King flies out the window, and crashing into a pile of garbage below and running away.

1: Cut shot of Korb pushing Homeless Joe
2: Alternative angle of Homeless Joe on the dumpster
3: The shot with fog included
4: Alternative overhead shot that wasn't used.

Here you can see I had to recut these scene a few times for a few different reasons. The script called for Korb to push Homeless Joe against the wall, but that made it seem too suggestive, so I changed it to Korb using his gun instead for the final version.

The overhead shot of the Alleyway was the part that changed the most during editing. I only had three to chose from, but I couldn't decide which one to stick with until the very end when it was time to submit. I ended up going with my second shot, even though it doesnt have any fog in it. I decided the fogless version because it emphasized the purple lights, which I liked.

1: Cut shot with Blast 108 FM reference
2: Testing shot for car chase
3: Another testing shot for car chase
4: Unused green-screen shot of car interior
5: Coruscant Speeder Chase (Star Wars Ep2, 2002)
6: Flying car shot (Atmospheria, 2021)

I have no movie scenes I can effectively compare this to, because it's always been an interest of mine to see a car chase, but with flying cars instead. How would that work? What would it be like?

I would figure its way harder to stop a flying car than it is to stop a speeding car on the ground. On ground you can use spike strip, nets, blockades, and other obstacles to stop cars, but in the air, there's no such way to stop a similar sized object going at similar speeds. You risk it crashing in buildings and the ground below, which posses huge safety concerns for those inside and around the car. Stopping a car while its flying in air is dangerous and extremely risky, and thats what interested me to make a scene about it.

Let's say you're able to knock one out of the sky, what happens after? Does it nosedive into the ground and instantly kill the passengers, does it glide down like a plane to relatively safe landing, or does it go down like meteor and cause fatal destruction in its path? I knew no matter which car went down, there would have to be survivors. I decided to go for the meteor approach with Korb and Suypur. Something emotionally life scarring, but not bad enough to kill them.

I got the main idea from Star Wars Episode 2 actually, When Anakin and Obi-Wan are chasing the bounty hunter Sam Wesell. It was a cool scene and I liked how they built suspense out of flying around in speeders.

The original car chase scene was meant to be much longer and cover a lot more area, but because of how large it would be, the original cut didnt have a car chase at all. It had Korb and Suypur arguing about losing the Rat King.

That wasn't very entertaining in the long run, so when my movie got sent back because of the Wife subplot, I had the chance to work the scene back in how I originally planned. I didn't have it as long as I wanted, but I had everything I needed and that worked out ok for me.

Getting the motion blur on the buildings around the cars was a fun part, because it meant I could use Photoshop. I just had to cut out the cars from the background, and add a radial motion blur effect. I had done a similar trick in Moving Ice for the some of the scenes where characters are running to varying success, but this time I think it works nice, and it makes the cars look like their going fast rather than just sitting in open air.

1: Wide shot of Suypur's Apartment (Atmospheria, 2021)
2: Alternative angle of Suypur looking at his phone
3: Greenscreen phone before I applied VFX
4: Suypur getting a call (Atmospheria, 2021)
5: Suypur and his wife deal with a train going by
6: Mills and his wife at dinner (Se7en, 1995)

Suypur's Apartment was some of the last parts of filming I did for this movie. The original script had Suypur living in a nice apartment with his wife, but when the wife subplot had to get removed I changed his home to be a lot more depressing.

He lives in a shoebox of an apartment, dimly lit by only the lamp on a table by his bed and a few TVs and Computer Monitors. Everything is a bland gray color to make it feel as lifeless as possible. He's a lonely man living in the most populated city in the world.

The inspiration for his apartment came from a few places. First, was my own bedroom in real life. While my room in real life has blue walls, it shares the same light setup, one lamp on a table near my bed. Its a very cold LED light that is basically pure white, and I found it interesting how it lit my room, so I replicated that look inside Roblox Studio for Suypur's apartment.

Next inspiration was the hitman's apartment from Fallen Angels. His apartment is even smaller, is only lit by a small box TV, and his bed takes up about half the space in his place. The thing I wanted to include from that movie was that the hitman's apartment was next to an active train track. I didn't bother building the train track because I figure the silence is better at conveying loneliness than a noisy train going nearby every few minutes.

There's a train going by Mill's apartment in Seven aswell, but that was played more for jokes than depression. And the Wife Cut had a train joke.

For Suypur's phone, I didn't want to have to upload the image of the phone's screen through Roblox, so yes believe it or not, the phones are greenscreen. I made a mockup screenshot of a phone in Adobe XD and pasted it onto the image I got from Roblox in Photoshop. Could I have just uploaded the screenshot to Roblox and used it as a decal? Sure. Did I want to? No. So I took the long way around for the fun of it.

You can see from the Wife Cut that Suypur was arguably living better than the Final Cut. He had a wife, a nicer place (albeit near a train track), a few dogs, and was making friends with Korb faster. This was all meant to copy Se7en, but obviously, the wife subplot isn't what you get to see in the final version.

In the final version, Korb was trying to make friends with Suypur by inviting him out to eat after work, but Suypur declined the invitation. I don't know why, but it felt like that would be something new Suypur would do. It felt like a purely instinctual decision for him. 

It makes you feel sorry for him, and it lets you as the viewer know that even though this is a fun action packed movie, these characters are dealing with real world problems like depression and loneliness.

1: Suypur discovers the box with his Wife's remains
2: Suypur looking inside the box
3: Suypur right before he shoots Rat King
4: Mills right before he shoots John Doe (Se7en, 1995)
4: Alternative angle of Korb shouting "No"

The Wife Cut had a very different rooftop scene. It more directly copied the final confrontation scene from Se7en. Since the conflict was hard baked into why they were on a roof in the first place, when I had to reedit the film, suddenly Korb and Suypur lost all their motive to be up on the roof in the first place besides just catching him for being a criminal. 

At first, they were chasing him because he had kidnapped Suypur's wife, but now that she was out of the equation, they had no motive, and it took a bad hit for the pacing and how intense the movie was supposed to be.

I had to figure out what would drive Suypur to shooting Rat King. Now that he doesnt have a wife, now that he's up here for no reason besides honest police work, what was going to be the reason he gets mad enough for shooting Rat King and making him fall off the side of the building?

Well, I introduced the concept of Officer Anderson, an off screen character who ends up being a central cog in the plan to arrest the Rat King. But compared to what I had in mind, Anderson is a shallow result of what could've been a more intense situation.

See, in Se7en, Detective Mills doesn't know his wife has been kidnapped, and when he finds out that she was killed by the man he had just arrested, Mills killed him in cold blood. I would've taken a similar approach in this film, but now that it wasnt an option anymore, I had to improvise.

I still have all of the original pictures from this rooftop scene. You now have the chance to see some of them now. Suypur finds his wife's remains in a cardboard box, and decides to shoot the Rat King in cold blood.

In the final cut, the only thing that Suypur gets mad at the Rat King about is that he killed Officer Anderson, and he was using Anderson to sell them out from the start. While it does an ok job at making Suypur seem like a hot head, it still feels like a hollow reason to kill someone like this. Wife revenge was much more intense compared to colleague revenge. It's too bad I can't really re-edit it back into the film anymore.

1: Rat King and Korb running up (Atmospheria, 2021)
2: Rat King falling off building (Atmospheria, 2021)
3: Korb shooting at Rat King (Atmospheria, 2021)
4: Deckard "retiring" Zhora (Blade Runner, 1982)
5: Alternative shot of Suypur looking up the stairs
6: Cut section with Suypur running to catch up

While the Wife Cut Rooftop was a lot different, thankfully I was able to reuse most of the other stuff I had already animated and taken pictures of. It was just a matter of splicing it all together in a way that made for a fun action scene.

You'll notice the spiral case, upon further inspection, has two spirals intertwined with each other. If I had just one spiral, the vertigo effect wouldn't nearly be as intense. I had it this way on purpose to seem like the building is taller than it was.

When the Rat King was falling off the building, I focused on his hat instead of him mainly because I don't want to show him dying as he's taking a free fall of the side of his home. The Hat is an easy way to shift attention without being too distracting.

There's about 60 images for the rooftop scene, all of them different angles of the same three characters, I only ended up using about 20-30. It was the only scene in the film where I had to shoot "coverage" because I didn't really know how I wanted to edit the end scene, especially when I had to re-cut it I had to reshoot some shots and get new coverage.

Coverage in a real life scene means to use one or more cameras to cover a scene at all angles, then just rely on editing to put it all together. It's a clunky way to make a film, but it's typically used for scenes with two or more characters talking to eachother. Normally you cut from wide shots to more narrow shots, but you can edit it any way necessary.

Coverage shooting means you get lots to work with while editing, but its one big downside is that its very easy to lose continuity from shot to shot. You might notice someones arm isnt in the right place, or the lip movement doesnt quite match up. This problem doesnt really happen inside Roblox, but it happens all the time in real life. Something to be careful of.

1: Original Korb. Eventually became Suypur
2: Noodle guy's real name is Howie Ping
3: Original flyover shot of the Astorian Legion HQ
4: Unused shot of the "Hit Refresh" advert
5: Unused shot of the German officer in the offices
6: Korb making calls in the Wife Cut
7: At one point, the city fog was a more intense orange
8: Unused VFX shot

1: Cool hallway I had no use for in the movie
2: Unused Suypur shot from the Wife Cut
3: The giant building behind the Club
4: Cut shot of the old flying car model
5: The baseplate where I have all the buildings
6: Suypur's apartment from a different angle
7: Unused closeup shot of Suypur in his apartment
8: Overhead shot of the Astorian Legion HQ

Atmospheria is a story about cops chasing criminals, but its also a story about ups and downs. People feel different ways about police work. Suypur enjoys being a cop, Korb doesn't. Korb likes the 'off work' life, Suypur doesn't. Its a dynamic that neither of them can push onto the other. Yin and Yang. Up and down.

Rat King is at the top of his game, and he gets shot down by the cop who likes being a cop. Rat King goes up, then he falls down. Suypur goes up, then he falls down. Korb is the only one who gets to leave the story on the positive note because he doesn't rise or fall, he's been at the same level the entire film. 

He understands the risks of being a cop for longer than you can stay at your prime, and it's because he wasn't in his prime is why Suypur ended up becoming a cold blood killer who gets fired from his job and essentially forced into exile.

I wrote the story to be 'sequel-proof' like this on purpose. I don't like writing my stories just to leave them on cliff-hangers that something new is coming, because there's and irrational fear within me that I'll never finish it. I wanted to write one story, and have it be the end of it then and there.

This still opens up the possibilities for prequels, although it's not a necessary story to tell. We know as much about each character that we need to understand. Korb is a man past his prime looking to settle down in life, Suypur is a man in his prime looking for glory, Xob is an old man who guides the young on a life changing journey, with years of experience behind him to back it up, and the Rat King is a notorious career criminal who has faced off with Xob and Korb before.

I would like to make a prequel, but maybe that'll be for a character besides Korb or the Rat King. Sure they could be supporting characters, but the stars of the show should go to characters that are younger and have more future interest and potential.

Atmospheria was fun to make and produce, and I'm glad it got the reactions it did when it released. It's a big scale movie that I've always dreamt of making, something I would've never been able to replicate on this scale in real life. I know I basically copied and blended movies to get this result, but it's exactly the type of movie I would've loved to see if it was made.

I make the movies I want to see, and you're all invited to see it with me.

With that said and done, I hope you enjoyed Atmospheria and I hope this gives you inspiration to make your own films, no matter how you decide to make them.

-BF