Before Moving Ice and Atmospheria were released around May / July of 2021, I was talking with a Roblox filmmaker from CineBlox Cinemas called Oddgotbanned. Odd had a in-game superhero franchise called the DIPU, the Daring Industries Picture Universe. It was basically the Marvel and DC of CineBlox, it was what got the most attention whenever a new movie came out. By the time I got there he had already produced 3-4 movies and was working on the next one. I told him I wanted my third movie for CineBlox to be my last, and I wanted it to be a movie that would tie in with his superhero universe.

The way I described Inverter to him was something darker and more gritty compared to his lighter and more humorous DIPU movies. He was skeptical of me, but when I showed him the then unreleased copy of Atmospheria his mood changed and he let me work on a script.

The first draft for the script I sent him had a teleporting Quin Pulse join up with the cops from Atmospheria to take down a mind-bending supervillain named Memorex. However, the draft was a line-for-line rip off of the Dark Knight, and Odd rejected the draft and told me he wasn't interested anymore. So I rewrote the entire thing ground up and tried to get his attention again. With a somewhat original second draft, he gave me the go-ahead.

He still had his concerns about how I was tying this movie to my own, and how it may not work well for his future plans. These questions led to the third draft, which is the closest to the final movie, and removed a lot of the Atmospheria references until the very end.

The original plan was to produce a WW2 movie called Wonderland before working on Inverter. I originally gave myself a deadline of Late 2021/Early 2022, and when I gave up working on Wonderland I knew if I wanted to hit my deadline I'd have to start then and there. So around October of 2021 I started working on Inverter. Little did I realize what a pain in the ass the next year of my life would be.

Atmospheria released and was held up by the CineBlox community as the best one they'd seen yet. I'll admit that the standards for a "good" movie in this Roblox community are unbearably low, and I often consider it embarrassing to explain to people in real life how I make movies using Roblox Studio. My real life friends have an annual tradition of re-watching The Last Guest and laughing at it, and the year I joined in on this tradition was the year I happened to be working on Inverter. Knowing that my real life friends react like this to Roblox movies made me realize my path in filmmaking would be tainted by my Roblox movies. I told myself I would finish the film, but then I would try to move on to real life films.

It's late 2021, October turns to November, I'm failing my online college classes, and Inverter work is going slower than I'd hoped. My thought process then was if Moving Ice only took a week or so to finish, and Atmospheria took about two months to finish, the Inverter would need 3 to 4 months, and I'd be able to get the movie out by March 2022. I told myself every day that my deadline was March, but I still couldn't quite figure out why I wasn't interested in continuing the work. The new year comes and goes, and now I feel the pressure building. I promised people a movie by March, but there'd be entire months where I wouldn't even touch the movie project files.

My problems looped back around on themselves like bad code, and bug fixing led back to bigger more prevalent issues that needed ground up reworking. I had shot a few scenes and put them into a slideshow, but they didn't feel right. So they sat and collected dust for months at a time.

Ultimately this hinderance stemmed from my lack of a central idea of what I really wanted. I knew I wanted some dark, slow paced action thriller in the neon-colored style of Drive and all the criminal intrigue of The Dark Knight, but I couldn't yet find a way to blend it in a way that I liked. So I ended up building, posing, and shooting a lot of material that never made it to the end besides an occasional recycled shot or as a teaser in my personal discord server.

This problem of needing to go backwards in order to go forwards is more or less how I operated for the next full year as I trudged my way through completing the movie. People complained, made local legends, and speculated my cryptic hints as I procrastinated work on the movie for months and months and months.

1: First Inverter screenshot from Roblox Studio, taken on July 30th, 2021

2: An early test image showing the different characters (Left to Right; Hazmat Goon, Red Knight/Javelin, Quin Taylor/Inverter, Memorex, Rat King, Sgt. Anderson, Lt. Xzavien Xob.

3: Lighting test, used as a promo image for movie's CineBlox release

4: Early test shot of the unused exterior of Charlie's Garage

Early on I decided to produce a non-canon scene between my character Quin Taylor / Inverter, and including Lorenzo / Blaze from Odd's DIPU. I made a test film that was about 20 images, and the main thing I was trying to do was invent the lighting and mood I wanted from the final movie. Odd really liked the test and encouraged me to keep going.

I knew that getting the mood of Inverter would require a lot of recycling from Atmospheria, but without the disgusting yellow fog and incessant use of purple light. So that meant copy/pasting the entire Club Aitherios set from Atmospheria and updating everything inside and outside the club. Main thing was now that I had a slightly better understanding of the lighting mechanics of Roblox Studio I wanted to clean up the place, make it look like I put effort into building the sets. 

I knew I wanted mostly practical lighting with an occasional invisible light source for dire situations, I wanted to be able to shoot in any location at 360 whenever I needed. That meant making sure everything was lit correctly at 360, as well as making sure every interior was detailed enough to be shot 360. Its a method I still carry over into my own short film projects.

At first I had a single world file that include everything Inverter related. The characters, the sets, the props, and anything extra like copies of each character's clothing throughout the movie. Most characters only need one set of cloths, but both Quin and Liz needed two sets of cloths. Quin had her black jacket for the majority of the movie, but needed a grease-stained t-shirt for one of the scenes in Charlies garage. Liz also had a work outfit, but later on she's just wearing pajamas.

A few glaring issues with some of my earliest images was the lack of detail and depth in the sets. I had built the interior of Charlie's garage too large and too empty to have it look like a realistically lived in set, so I had to rebuild the entire interior and reshoot every scene I had done up to that point. I'm glad I did rebuild the garage, because I still consider it the best interior set of the entire movie.

One thing I knew I got right about Charlie's garage from the beginning was his record table. Music would play an important role both in the story and in the movie as a whole, so I wanted to make sure his record player and selection of music on top of the table looked perfect. It's one of the few things inside his garage that survived the rebuilding besides the neon sign that says CHAR LIES.

Another set that went through a lot of iterations throughout production was Quin's apartment in the opening scene. I wanted to copy the lighting and vibe of my little brother's obnoxious LED light strips that he constantly has at the redest of reds, so I had originally bathed Quin's space in deep neon red. I realized quick that it did look cool and was moody as hell, it wasn't in character for Quin to choose red when clearly her favorite color (and my favorite as well) is purple. 

It's also worth noting that the original versions of Quin's apartment was actually Suypur's from Atmospheria, a detail I hoped I could've kept but soon became useless to try to justify. So from shrinking the apartment down to a claustrophobic scale and changing the color of the lights, the fifth overall reshoot of Quin's apartment was the one that made it to the end result.

1: Lorenzo / Blaze test shot in an unused scene

2: Rebuilt interior of Club Aitherios, updated from the original set used in Atmospheria

3: Overhead shot of the baseplate with most of the sets used for early Inverter. From Left to Right; the unused bank set, character and prop copies, Charlie's garage exterior, the wall behind Quin's apartment, rebuilt Club Aitherios set

4: Original interior of Charlie's garage, it's larger, darker, and more empty than the rebuilt version used in the final movie.

5: An early iteration of Quin's apartment with neon red lights instead of purple.

In the script there was a scene that introduced Red Knight / Javelin from his perspective as he foiled a bank robbery being committed by some hazmat goons. In my head canon, the reason why some of the criminals in the movie wear masks or respirators is because the police of this alternate semi-futuristic Los Vangelis have developed the technology to extract DNA evidence from the air someone breathes. So to counteract this, criminals of LV started wearing masks or breathing from tanks to avoid having their stank breath get used as evidence. This detail would've made more sense if I decided to keep in the bank robbery scene, but I ended up cutting it.

This scene would've taken place between Quin getting told to go to sleep while working at Charlies and the scene where Rat King and Memorex have their first interaction. In my mind when I wrote the draft I thought it would be a cool action scene to have between two scenes of mostly talking. I structured the entire script of Inverter off the idea of Action > Talking > Action > Talking throughout the entire runtime. I ended up cutting the bank robbery scene for a two main reasons;

1: It would've taken too long to choreograph and finish filming. The reason why Roseaudite is credited as a "Fight Choreographer" in the final movie was because of her work for the bank robbery. There were supposed to be five hazmat goons plus Javelin, and Jav had to take out each one in a way that would make it appear he didn't have any plot armor. I got about a third of the way into filming the scene before giving up, and it's sad that Rose's work was cut out. Thankfully though, Rose got a chance to help me layout the club shootout scene later in the movie, so her talents weren't entirely for naught. Ultimately, Javelin's plot armor came from the fact that I decided to cut the scene entirely lol.

2: It would've taken a hit to the pacing of the movie. Although I already explained the talking > action > talking > action flow for most of the scenes, this is the one exception where it would've been detrimental. Firstly, this scene at this point of the movie would've been a flashback, and given there was no anchor point to explain why this flashback is appearing would make it confusing to watch. Secondly, it ruined any suspense of Javelin being a good guy rather than a bad guy. After cutting the scene, I doubled down on trying to introduce the Red Knight as a dangerous, mysterious character with complicated motives. Had this scene been included, it would've spoiled any chance of that. If I had placed the scene chronologically to the timeline of the movie it would've been even worse because there'd be no tension of Quin waiting in the car.

1: Earliest image of the Bank Robbery scene

2: Some of the character posing image-by-image that was done for one of the hazmat goons.

3: Some of the character posing image-by-image that was done for Red Knight / Javelin

4: The last shot I took of the bank scene before I gave up trying to complete it

5: A meta appearance as my Roblox avatar as the director of Inverter (this entire shot was modeled from scratch and wasn't a gameplay screenshot)

The first scene that I recorded that survived my constant rebuilding and reshooting (for the most part) was the scenes that take place at Liz's apartment during the climax of the movie. There were a total of four scenes that took place all back to back in this relatively contained location, that being Quin's phonecall with Liz, Quin and Liz's surgery on Javelin, The trio's conversation about Charlie, and finally the parking lot shootout and confrontation against Memorex. I built Liz's apartment set both the interior and exterior around November of 2021, so it should come as a shock that the LAST shots I needed before finishing Inverter were of this set. The first to be shot, the last to be shot.

At this point I had lost Liz's original character model which had the haircut I wish I could've kept, so a lot of character design for Liz had to be solidified during these few scenes. Originally she was going to have a wolf cut and appear to have a lighter skin tone compared to the longer hair and darker skin of the version she is in the movie. The darker skin was mainly to counteract the lighting in the interior of her apartment, which was primarily white colored overheads. This caused a terrible blooming effect to be apparent on the highlights of the skin, and the only way I could think of to fix it was just make the characters skin a darker complexion.

There are some minor details inside her apartment that I threw in because I wanted the audience to infer that she was a college student and didn't leave her apartment unless it was for class or work. The posters next to her bed are exactly the same as the posters next to my bed in my old house before I moved out. She wears similar pajamas that I wear in real life, and she even sits up at three am watching movies on a laptop, just like me. It's fair to say if I had a self-insert character (besides my self-cameo as a cop during at the beginning of the movie), it would be Liz.

One of the posters above Liz's bed is a copy of the Last Supper painting. This has a bit of real life lore attached to it, because I also have a copy of the Last Supper painting hanging above my bed. I'm not even religious in real life, and I knew I didn't HAVE to include it, but I did include it for the sole purpose of pissing of another CineBlox filmmaker who's extremely devout and is willing to argue about religion for hours and hours. He ended up leaving CineBlox before the movie came out, so I ended up cutting it out a bit at the beginning and hoping no one notices it in the background when Liz is in her call with Quin.

Later in the scene during the surgery to get the bullet out of Javelin's chest, I shot the scene as gory and bloody as I could make it. I showed some test images to Loui early on to see if he'd be ok with it, and he was, but the main problem was getting it past Roblox's moderators. The CineBlox release of Inverter has some stand-in shots of Liz's coffee maker instead of the close ups of the tweezers being pushed into Javelin's chest, but the YouTube version has all the wonderful gory goodness I originally wanted.

In fact, the entire surgery scene is structured like the heroin overdose scene from Pulp Fiction. If you look at the two scenes side by side, you'd see that I essentially copied the entire thing line-for-line. Some dialogue about medicinal needles and name brand medication were cut from the movie, even the YouTube version, because I don't want to risk getting in trouble with a healthcare company over a Roblox movie of all things.

The outside scene was the bit that needed reshoots at the end. When all the other scenes of Inverter were completed, the shootout with Memorex was the one that needed to be redone so I could finally wrap up Inverter. The main problem I had was explaining how Quin failed to save Javelin's life. So consider, Memorex has mind-bending powers, Quin has time-reversing powers, and Javelin is still injured after being shot earlier. 

What I needed to do was explain how Memorex was able to get Javelin killed without having Quin use her powers to save his life again. What I ended up doing was having Memorex use his mind-bending powers against Quin, and whenever she was being mind-tapped by Memorex, she couldn't use her time powers. How I ended up finishing the scene, I admit, was a bit messy. But it still got the job done. The last shot of my work on Inverter was of Javelin lying on the pavement in front of Memorex, looking off at the purple dodge charger that's speeding away.

1: The only screenshot I have of Liz with her original haircut

2: Early iteration of Liz's apartment interior

3: The two posters hanging over Liz's bed, a map of the Los Angeles subway system and the Last Supper

4: An unused interior shot of the hallway inside Liz's apartment building

5: Posing Quin, Liz, and Jav for the surgery scene

6: LMAO I really wanted to post this as a joke but couldn't because it would've spoiled the surgery scene

7: The last shot taken for Inverter production, taken January 20th, 2023

In case it wasn't clear already, I didn't shoot the film chronologically at all. I jumped around between sets sporadically depending on my energy level and mood, both of which were low for a long while Inverter sunk well past its intended deadline of March 2022. There are a few things here and there in the screenshots folder, but there was very little real work happening between March and July of 2022.

This section is relatively short simply because I don't remember a whole lot from this time, I was just procrastinating mainly. After I failed to get to the March 2022 deadline my energy for Inverter dropped to zero. Thus began the infamous "Inverter curse".

For a good portion of 2022, all of the inside jokes from the filmmakers who worked for CineBlox stemmed back to the lack of films being produced at that time. Only Odd was able to avoid the worst of this curse and he released the one and only CineBlox movie to come out during 2022, The Zeniths. Around this time Loui was busy working on CineBlox V3 and he was forced to halt uploading any new movies to the game, so that dampened spirits even further. In fact, Odd completed not one but three Roblox movies of similar length to Inverter during my yearlong procrastination; The Zeniths, A King's Last Day, and Bolt 2. For a while he didn't let me live that fact down, which in the moment was good fun but made me lose hope in Inverter even more.

Peach claimed to be working on the infamously long-awaited vaporware Battle of the Galaxies, a Star Wars rip-off that was announced as far back as 2020. Samfox had some momentary work done on his projects such as the Illusion and a sequel to Crazy Vacation, Rose was working on a film project called Pandoras but that never made it anywhere, despite me helping her with shooting at one point. Most big projects that were announced for CineBlox during 2022 were either delayed into 2023 for the release of V3, or they were straight up abandoned or cancelled, and it seemed that all of this led back to me and the Inverter curse of 2022.

But in some good news, I did complete one scene during this near four-month break, and that was the fight scene between the Rat King and Memorex.

1: An early promo shot of a silhouette Quin, used for the earliest designed poster

2: This shattering glass effect took hours to get right holy Jesus

3: An unused partially built exterior location, the name "Corwin Park" is a reference to a location from the Odd's Blaze movies.

4: In my head canon, Inverter takes place in Encino, which is a real neighborhood in northern Los Angeles. The name "Liquid Courage" was my way to get around having an alcohol reference in Inverter.

5: Originally, Quin's time power was supposed to have sparkle effect.

One night I watched La La Land and decided after finishing the film that I would get working on Inverter again. If I hadn't watched that movie, chances are Inverter would've taken another year or more to release.

The scene that got me back into the flow of working on Inverter was the scene between Quin and a younger Xzavien Xob from Atmospheria. In my notes, I have it written that Xob is in his forties during the events of Inverter, and in his sixties or seventies during the events of Atmospheria. In Atmospheria he's bald, so I figured why not have him with white hair for Inverter?

Having a younger Xob was the only practical way to include an Atmospheria agent in Inverter, simply because Korb is canonically still only 17 years old, and Suypur wouldn't be born for another seven years. So if you think about it, Inverter is a disconnected prequel to Atmospheria.

This one was complicated to shoot because I had to find a way to make a conversation between two people not boring for the average CineBlox audience. I learned from experience that they WILL get lost during extended dialogue scenes, and even if they do pay attention, they will quickly get confused. Both of which I tried my darndest to remedy, but alas, most people who watched the movie complained about being lost during this scene.

Which sucks, because this was my one and only opportunity to merge the worlds of Atmospheria and Inverter together as one, therefore bringing Atmospheria characters into the lore of the DIPU, which in a way, was my plan for this movie from the beginning. For the sake of having a functional scene instead of purely self-fan-serving, I included the new character of Captain Miles.

Captain Miles was meant to be my answer to the question no one but me asked, "Who was the Atmospheria Captain before Xob?" He was also my opportunity to build up potential for a sequel to Inverter, which I had planned at the time, but since I've been sitting on the fence about. I knew I wanted to make an Inverter 2 so that I could tie Quin into the DIPU in a better way, plus I had further ideas for the characters that I knew would be fun to show. 

But ultimately, I put Inverter 2 on the backburner because I wanted to get back into making real life short films before I tried to make another Roblox movie. I didn't want to be a 20–21-year-old man going to college and making movies that my real-life friends would laugh at like they laugh at The Last Guest. I wanted to make Inverter 2, but I didn't want to at the same time. It's complicated. But despite having the decisiveness of a cat sitting in an open door, I wanted to plant the seeds of possibility. Just in case.

1: A big problem I had during production was the fact that white people keep glowing under bright light

2: AAAAAAAVEEEE MAAAARIIIIIIIIAAAAAA

3: A cool shadow glitch I found during the making of the interogation scene

4: Posing multiple Xobs without a floor or props looks kinda funny, leading to moments like this

The interrogation scene got me out of the bunker, but the first driving scene got me back on the green. This was the moment I re-remembered my primary inspiration for this entire movie was Drive. Truly a film bro moment.

The graffiti next to Javelin during his introduction scene was drawn by an online friend of mine, he also contributed other works of graffiti for the Club Aitherios shootout scene later on in the movie.

Around this time, I remember I had just bought Terminator 2 on a 4K Blu-Ray and really liked the blue lighting they used for that movie. So, for the practical lighting in this scene, I used blue neon window signs mixed with a bit of pinkish/red, which worked out great because the blue light was what I wanted, the reddish color helped make Quin's skin color look a bit more vibrant, and together the two colors illuminated the rest of the set in a purplish hue.

Ironically, half of this driving scene is spent with Quin in the car, waiting for the Red Knight to finish his business. I think this works pretty well, and my reasoning is the same that you need to coil a spring before you release it. You gotta take your time to build tension in a scene if you plan on having some action. The more tension, the better the release. So, I wanted to make sure that while Quin was sitting around and waiting for her client to get back, she was listening to the bank scene on her police scanner.

In some original concept art for this movie, she originally had a dash mounted box radio similar to a real police scanner, but I realized having a handheld radio would serve it better just because it could be something she holds instead of just looks at. Plus, the fact that there was absolutely zero chance of finding a realistic police scanner in Roblox Studio's shop, they were all either a really crappy mesh or a stupid looking box of jumbled parts. No bueno.

Looking through the project files I also found a crap ton of random shots of the city model I was working with in various stages of night and daylight. I originally wanted to have opening shots similar to Drive but realized that pacing would take a hit if I included unnecessary overhead shots of the city. Some overhead shots made it in as scene transitions later in the movie, but that's only about 10% of what I originally wanted to include.

In Drive, a big motif is the drivers watch and how he always counts down from five minutes. I knew I wanted to have that motif work its way into Inverter just because Quin's powers are time-based. That watch is pretty much how she stays grounded in real time while she's using her powers to evade cops and avoid being seen on the road. It was perfect to have Quin have a watch during this scene because it made so much sense for her character. It's all about time.

1: Unused shot of Red Knight / Javelin's introduction

2: Unused shot of Quin waiting in the car

3: Unused meta-shot of my Roblox avatar directing this scene

4: This shot was meant to be Quin looking over her shoulder before reversing, but then I had to realize she doesn't have a face, you can't see her eyes, and this pose makes no sense because of that.

5: A behind-the-scenes picture of posing Red Knight

If old people hit you with the "Oh I wish I was in the sixties, things were simpler then, it was a good decade" no the fuck it wasn't. There was the Vietnam war, hippie culture, and abundant racism. The only good thing about the 60's was that it ended. That being said, the one okay thing to emerge from that decade was the American diner.

The script for Inverter didn't have a post-credit scene of any kind, but I knew I wanted to plant the seeds of a sequel anyway and having a post-credit scene would be the way to do it. The inspiration for the diner itself comes straight from Baby Driver, and decorating the interior was the most fun I had building anything during the production of Inverter. There were so many things crammed into that tiny space I'm surprised I got enough room left over at all.

The waitress who checks in on Quin and starts a conversation with her is loosely inspired by my older sister, who also has long wavy blond hair. My sister never worked in a diner, but she did work food service as a waitress, so this scene is a quick acknowledgement of my older sister. 

The conversation about the babysitter is one of those sequel seeds I planted purely for the sake of the audience. I hoped that someone would figure out what it meant, but I'll just explain instead.

The waitress describes being 5 or 6 years old having a babysitter that looks just like a Quin. However, she then says her babysitter went missing at 18 years old back in 2003. Which then would conflict with Quin saying she's only 20 years old, meaning she was theoretically born in 1999. However, consider, Quin's superpowers are based on time. She can go forward, slow down, or stop time, but she can't get it to go backwards more than a few seconds at a time. If you consider all of that, what sort of theories would you conclude?

That's not all the diner scenes had to offer.

It was originally twice as long, and the second half after the conversation with the waitress would've shown a group of characters who call themselves the Knights of Los Vangelis. These knights, codenamed Azure, Gold, Verid, and Sable work together to continue the legacy of Red Knight, and once they find out about Quin, they're desperate to get her to join them. The CineBlox release had the half-cut post-credit scene, but the YouTube version had the full post-credit scene with sequel seed planting aplenty.

I ended up making the diner scene just the waitress for the CineBlox release because, like I said, I'm like an indecisive cat sitting in an open door. I don't want to make an Inverter 2, but I want to so bad at the same time. I wanted to foreshadow a potential sequel without outright admitting I would work on it immediately. I didn't want to give false hope too quickly and then disappoint when I disappear from Roblox. Again, planting the seeds. Just in case.

1: Unused angle of Quin from the diner scene

2: A test shot of the diner without a roof for some reason

3: The Knights of Los Vangelis character models

4: Random decorations used in the diner

5: The Waitress character model

For context, what eventually became "The Laundromat Scene" was originally "The Supermarket Scene". The point of the scene was to show Quin doing an everyday, mundane task that a typical single 20 year old college student would do, and for my purposes, the laundromat does a fair job. But there is valid reason why it was changed from a supermarket. During 2022 there was a mass shooting at a supermarket in the city nearby where I lived. At the time I worked at one of the store's locations (not affected by the shooting), but it was still gut wrenching to hear about in the news later that day. I realized that having an action scene with shooting guns inside of a grocery store would be a terrible thing to include given the real life context, so I had to change up the location. I settled with the laundromat.

Although the reason I had to switch from a grocery store was depressing enough, building the laundromat itself was the most fun I had building a set for Inverter by far. It was compact, messy, filled with random stuff that cluttered up the floor, it was exactly the kind of "poor person in a big city" vibe that I was trying to go for. Taking inspiration from a real life laundromat definitely helped, the one I used to visit while I was moving out.

Another thing I realized I could do with the laundromat setting is have a DIPU reference thrown in. I was mainly interested in helping Odd throw in plot seeds for what could become Blaze 3. While I was working on Inverter, he had shared with me a document of his master outline for the entire DIPU, including every movie project, what hero they would cover, what villain they'd face, and how it all tied together. It was an infinitely useful resource to have, because it meant that I knew (atleast minimally) what he would work on next.

Having the news report be about Blaze instead of another hero was done for a few reasons. Firstly, Blaze is probably Odd's most well known hero, so it just made the most sense because its what most Roblox audience members would be familiar with. Secondly, Blaze 3 was an upcoming project that Odd had shared with me, so some of the lines that the news reporter said had the chance to tie in with the plot of Blaze 3. And third, I was really fascinated with the idea of how people (especially the media) reacted to Blaze.

The way I wrote the news reporters lines was obviously right on the nose and didn't really hide any emotional feeling, but it was also supposed to somewhat parody real life news stations that use heavy pathos language to get a strong emotional reaction from their viewers. They're basically just selling fear and using scare tactics to get good ratings. Plus, the fact that I'm literally going to college for a degree in Media Arts, learning how news stations work is all in the fun of making that one little moment. It was only about five frames worth of the end product, but it was really funny for me to do because it tied in so well with what I want to do in the real world.

I thought of cutting out the Blaze reference in order to streamline the plot a little bit, but decided to keep it anyway. What I did remove from this scene was another driving segment, where Quin and Jav drive across the mountains of north Los Vangelis to escape the hazmat goons. I cut it for no better reason than I was simply feeling lazy. I wish now that I could've atleast shot it, but I didn't. I think having a second driving segment here would've been a great way to build character moments between Quin and Jav and added to the tension of the story, but it's too late to wish now.

1: Unused establishing shot of the laundromat

2: Another unused establishing shot of the laundromat

3: Besides Odd, I have one other online friend who speaks Spanish, and both had wildly different ways of translating this exact same sentence.

4: The screenshot that was used as Quin's phone background when Liz calls

5: A bunch of random Red Knights patrolling the outside of the laundromat set.

6: Behind the scenes screenshot of moving Quin's arm into place to catch a bullet that was stopped in time.

The Motel scene was one I wish now I could've replaced with another scene, because re-watching, it just makes no damn sense. Why would Quin and Jav suddenly be down eachothers throats after Quin literally saved Jav in the previous scene? Why would they argue with eachother about who Memorex is? Why would Jav just reveal all this exposition dump info in one sitting and then suddenly leave? Theres a bunch of little things that don't add up.

My main movie inspiration for the motel scene comes from Drive, but instead of ending in a deadly confrontation it just ends with a diffusion of tension and suddenly Quin and Jav are on the same page about what to do. Ultimately, my motel scene was meant to be Quin and Jav laying low for awhile and planning out how to take down Memorex, but it ended up being pure exposition dump with no regard for audience retention. Mind you this scene comes immediately after the first act break, so to ruin all of the pacing like this is probably what turned off most audience members. No wonder our attention spans are for shit lol.

And even the way I shot the scene is boring. Its just back and forth dialogue the entire time. The only amount of tension between the two characters the entire time is that Quin gets Jav's electric shotgun, but then she just gives it back.

Anyway, not much else to say about this scene besides that I hate it. Atleast I know for the future not to waste movie time doing stupid pace-breaking exposition dumps like this.

1: Unused shot of Quin holding Jav's electric shotgun

2: I wish I used this shot of the electric shotgun in some sort of promo material, its such a good picture.

3: Meta behind the scenes screenshot of my Roblox avatar directing the motel scene

4: Theres a funny glitch in Roblox Studio when you load in a map that Quin's hair would appear missing for a few seconds before it loads it. I managed to get one screenshot of this before it loaded in. Bald Quin lmao.

5: Annother meta behind the scenes where Quin smokes a cigarette

I realized about three quarters of the way into making this movie that I didn't have as many driving scenes as I was hoping for, so I went out of my way to include this specific scene for no other reason than; I wanted more driving scenes, and also to have a low-stakes character moment between Quin and Javelin.

This scene was extremely simple to shoot, and by this point I had figured out each character well enough that I could just invent original dialogue for them instead of stealing a scene from one of my inspiration movies. And yes, I did steal a line of dialogue or two from other movies, but the scene as a whole is fairly original and frankly I'm proud of it.

As I'm writing this behind the scenes it helps me understand why I lost interest in Roblox filmmaking in general and its just because I figured out that my style isn't just constant action and neon lights but its quiet, low-stakes character moments like Quin and Javelin bickering with each other like siblings while they're moving between story beats.

After I made the public announcement that Inverter had finished filming, I hosted a few private watch parties to go through the entire movie and suggest notes for me, and one of those notes was to have more character development for Javelin before he dies, in order to highlight his own motives and why he does what he does. So for all of the shots that look like the camera's in the backseat was my attempt at embracing those suggestions.

The story Javelin talks about the homeless veterans outside of the VA Building is based on real life, there are in fact homeless veterans who camp out on the street outside of a VA Hospital in northern LA. The detail of the leader with the long blue hair is based on a real man who was featured in a YouTube documentary that I saw while I was making this movie, so I wanted to include him as a character in this movie.

Once I shot that extra part of the scene I exported all of the completed shots and sent it over to Loui so that he could begin working it into CineBlox. He wouldn't get to upload it for another few months, but that scene of Javelin talking about his experiences outside of the VA building is the last thing I filmed for Inverter.

1: Unused shot of Javelin and Quin in a car

2: Javelin browsing around Quin's glove box for papers

3: Unused shot of Quin's eyes being lit up by a reflection in the rear view. I ended up cutting this one because she doesn't have eyes so it doesn't make a lot of sense to include it.

4: The only forward facing shot of Javelin's VA building story, used in the final movie

5: The true last shot I took for Inverter, taken January 21st, 2023

Charlie's death was a moment I had planned from the very inception of the movie. Of course, for those of you who have watched Drive, you'd know that the death of the auto-shop owner dude was something that happened in that movie as well, and the circumstances for the dudes death is virtually the same as it is in Inverter. But the main difference between my version and Drive is that it's done much better in Drive lol.

I'd argue the reason why my version doesn't hold up is that its full of narrative backtracking and scotch-tape patchwork over gaping plot holes. Why wouldn't Quin use her time powers to save Charlie? Why wouldn't she use her powers to stop Javelin and Charlie from fighting? Why wouldn't she just, y'know, NOT VISIT CHARLIE AT ALL? But by this point I was too stuck to the plot that I couldn't allow for such questions to be answered correctly, I needed to play fast and lose with my own worldbuilding rules in order for this scene to work. And hoh boy, it does NOT hold up at all.

In fact, this scene is one of three I was constantly shuffling around while I was editing because I couldn't quite figure out how the later half of the movie would play out. This scene along with Liz's apartment scene and the Aitherios Alleyway scene, I tried playing the movie out in all sorts of different setups and this scene just before the Alleyway is what ended up making the most sense to me. The reasoning being, Quin needed motivation to follow Javelin into what was basically a suicide mission to the Aitherios Alleyway, and killing off Charlie sooner was a really sloppy but easy way to give her that motivation.

But that in itself led to a new set of problems, such as the explanation for why Quin couldn't use her powers to save Charlie. The way I went about that was by trying to work in the idea that whenever she gets hit in the head or gets her mind read by Memorex, she can't use her powers. There are plenty of other moments throughout the movie where Quin's time bending powers could've been used to deus ex machina people out of dangerous situations, but I just HAD to keep the story going, and that meant nerfing Quin.

Besides all that illogical bs, this scene was particularly gruesome in comparison to the rest of the movie. Sure, there's the surgery scene in Liz's apartment, but the amount of blood on the floor around Charlie after he's stabbed was enough to get the Roblox Mods on my ass. Loui, as awesome and encouraging as he was, didn't want to get his account banned for my images, so I had to cut a few frames out for the CB release. Not like the blood adds any real value to the story itself, it's just there for shock.

1: A poster I made that was supposed to help further tie the worlds of Atmospheria and Inverter closer together

2: Unused alternate shot of Quin entering the garage

3: Unused alternate shot of Quin and Charlie talking

4: Behind the scenes shot of the area I used to pose/model the characters before inserting them into the shooting set

5: A meta behind-the-scenes shot of my roblox avatar passed out on the floor surrounded by Rat King and Charlie, this shot was used during the Inverter premiere livestream

6: I'd usually model multiple versions of the same character in different poses and just copy/paste the characters into the shooting set for efficiency

This scene was probably the most complicated scene to choreograph just because there were a lot of moving characters and a lot of opportunity for the story to go sideways. Thankfully, a certain person from the CB community came in clutch and basically helped me stage this entire scene beginning to end.

She had originally came in to help me with the bank robbery, but when I cut that scene out I knew I didn't want her effort to go all to waste, so I asked for her help again for this scene and helped me figure out and plan out the fight, where each character would move to, who did what when, all that fun stuff.

The main downside I saw to having so many Hazmat goon throughout the movie was that they always added an extra layer of complexity to any fight scene they were involved in, usually because there was always more than one and none of them have any features to help differentiate one from another. Needing to coordinate two or more of these dudes along with the main and side cast, and doing so blindly without much telling which one's which, made making this movie more stressful than it needed to be.

The alleyway fight in the script is much more detailed and goes on for a bit longer than how it plays out in the final movie, and main reason for the trimming was just because, by this point, I had been working on Inverter for just about a year and I just wanted to get the movie done and over with. I could've given less of a shit if there were logical fallacies or plot holes in the fight, who cares, it's a Roblox movie being watched by a bunch of 13 year old's, it's not like they were gonna see or make out any of the detail anyway lmao.

Not much else to say about this scene besides that I rushed through it without thinking too much about it, because in the end it was just another plot point to move the story along, it didn't have to be any good it just had to be finished.

1: Unused establishing shot of Aitherios Alleyway

2: A BTS shot of one of the hazmat goons

3: Every hazmat goon in the scene each got different poses for different stages of the fight, which ended up being more complicated than it probably could have been

4: I like how the moon lined up so well with the buildings :)

5: She hazzin' on my mat till I goon

6: Unused shot of Quin waiting in the getaway car during the alleyway fight

7: Different models of Javelin used during the fight

The Space scene was one that ended up being a bigger pain in my ass than any other scene in the movie, more for technical reasons than anything else.

The thing is that at the time I made this, I didn't really understand how bloom in Roblox studio worked, so I basically just had it at max settings for the entire movie. This is the only scene that I ended up being humbled and had to turn it off. Theres a few reasons for why I did that and why it was such a problem.

Firstly; around this point I had been experimenting with AI images, which at the time was limited to DALLE 2, the results I got are kinda smudgy and give off intense early AI vibes. I decided to go the AI route because 1: it was cool and new and exciting and 2: the script called for something more esoteric and surreal, and building massive and complicated sets would just be more of a waste of time. But that meant I had to generate all the backgrounds in advance, which ended up becoming my second problem

Secondly; I figured if I was gonna use pre-made backgrounds I would just use a green screen and just cut out the green to impose my characters on the backgrounds I made later in photoshop. This was the beginning of my problems. The thing is, I had an absolutely terrible time figuring out how to get a clean green screen cutout. With the added bloom it did NOT help. The bloom got in the way of the green underneath, and surely I could cut out just the green, but then anywhere there was bloom, there would be a weird halo effect of neon green around the characters heads. And given that both Quin had glowing purple hair and Memorex had a glowing red mask didn't help much either. I'd like to see YOU take a crack at it.

As much as I wanted to keep the bloom I couldn't, I had to turn it all the way down so that way I could get the cleanest possible green screen cuts. I had even gotten it to a point where I could hide the little green pixely outline by just making the green edge completely black, and that made it easy to hide against the dark backgrounds of space and the AI backgrounds.

Besides that conundrum, the space scene ended up being my go-to scene if I didn't feel like doing anything else. If I got bored working on one scene, I'd just switch over to space and screw around for awhile. It was really fun to mess around with all the properties for different objects and see how the reflections on objects would bend or twist. For the black hole and the white hole moments, those were generated entirely inside Roblox Studio with no extra photoshop or AI.

For me the space scene is my favorite point of the movie no doubt about it. The dialogue and story is kinda meh, but the visuals of the space scene is (in my opinion) the best of the entire movie.

1: Unused establishing shot of space

2: Unused shot of the black hole

3: Unused shot of warping space

4: An alternate shot of the light blast following the black hole scene

5: A green screen shot of Quin and Memorex that made me realize that I needed to turn the bloom effect off

6: Random shot of different character models of Quin against a green screen (which was just a smooth plastic brick made as green as possible)

Tiny Javelin hehehehe

A random behind the scenes shot of Javelin

Do I regret making Inverter? No. It was formative for me as a storyteller and a filmmaker, it was a better film school than any film school I could've gone to.

Ever since I started making Roblox movies back during March of 2021, I realized that it was not a good way to earn the legitimacy I was looking for. I instead treated Roblox filmmaking as a sport, some practice, something easy to work on while I was busy with college classes. 

What surprised me the most about sharing these movies with CineBlox was that people actually liked them and considered them to be among the best that the theater had to offer. I don't want to stroke my own ego but the audience of CineBlox is unbearably naive, every movie in the theater is terrible, but in its own special way. Honestly I didn't expect to surrounded by anything that was quality, but I didn't expect it to be as bad as what I saw. Most of these Roblox filmmakers working for CineBlox didn't even bother to move around the characters arms, legs, head, or anything, just left them as is and moved them around the scene like stiff dolls. No one had any grasp of how to use lighting, build custom sets, or do any of the work that would otherwise be necessary to make a movie. Thing is, I needed to understand, this is not my playfield. I'm not 13 years old, I'm 21, and what I consider to be acceptable is not at all at the same level as these other filmmakers.

When I started Inverter I thought I was on top of my game and that I'd make more Roblox movies than this. I figured if Atmospheria took me about a month, then Inverter would take about three, but then ended up taking me about a full year and a half to finish. Even now as I'm writing this two years after starting Inverter I'm still mentally stuck on this movie. When I was finishing the film I knew I didn't want to make another, but there was that other part of me that just wanted to work on another one, whether that was Inverter 2 or some other project. But, at the end of the day, I wanted to work on legitimacy, and I knew I wouldn't find that in CineBlox, or in Roblox. I had to move on.

My thought was I could do stuff in Blender, but turns out that Roblox's controls do not translate at all to Blender. I've still yet to learn how to use the program, I wish I could learn how and make some shorts using Blender so I could spiritually continue what I did using Roblox. Using Studio to make these short films was undeniable fun for me, however, I'm 21 years old and in college, making movies using Roblox is not a good way to go.

For several months following my announcement to CineBlox that I was leaving I genuinely grappled with the idea of doing more Roblox movies, but as I'm writing this now (Jan 31st, 2024) I've made my final choice. No. I won't do another Roblox movie. But that's not to say I didn't have fun while it lasted. I don't regret making Roblox movies, but I do regret that I won't make any more.

Thank you for the continued support and interest!

-BF