The Polyphonic Spree's Atmosphere Film, Renamed Resolution, Set to Screen at SXSW and in Fort Worth

It’s easy to be a fan of The Polyphonic Spree. In 2023, the band released Salvage Enterprise, a sprawling mellow-masterpiece that marks their fifth original studio album. In 2024, they hit the road on a slew of West Coast dates, their first official tour in years.

While the colorful band brought down any house that would take them, a small team of artists worked in the shadows on an ambitious film project that would pair with the latest album.

Atmosphere was an immersive cinematic experience that brought each song from Salvage Enterprise to life in a series of short vignettes. It has screened at the Sky Theater on the University of North Texas campus, a dome theater experience, for some time now.

The film is a magnificent, psychedelic swing for the fences that many artists wouldn’t even attempt. Director Scott Berman is a maximalist in all the best ways. He’s been a longtime collaborator with the Spree's frontman Tim DeLaughter, translating his music into visual form since the early days of Tripping Daisy. In the ‘90s, Berman’s toy chest consisted of elaborate projector displays, often using dozens layered on top of each other. Now, with the help of a crew of animators and technical director Ryan Hartsell, he’s able to bring an entire album to life in cinematic, immersive form.

“I wanted to celebrate the differences in different art,” Berman says. “But really it goes along with what the film is about, which is celebrating the fact that individuals have a lot in common, but they’re all unique.”

The film opens from the POV of a campfire, looking around at the people that circle it. Just before each song begins, the camera centers on one particular person in the group before diving into their subconscious as represented by the song. The vignettes are a mix of unique animation styles made from a variety of artists around the world, plus an unforgettable live-action sequence shot in a desert.

“Individuals have [things] in common but they’re all unique,” Berman says. “When you’re diving into the mind of one person, it’s going to look totally different than when you’re diving into the mind of somebody else.”

Earlier this year, the band and production behind Atmosphere announced three pieces of massive news that lay the foundation for the subsequent year of work. For one, Atmosphere was no more. The film would be renamed Resolution, with some minor changes to certain animations and the image quality.

“The name Atmosphere came before we had even made the film,” Berman says. “We loved that name because it's the simplicity of it and that it had the word sphere in it. But once we really got down to making the film and the emotional side of the film, we didn't feel like it connected with it, and Resolution does.”

Some of the animated vignettes deal with substance abuse, strained parental relationships and long, dramatic journeys.

“The film is about recognizing obstacles that you want to overcome,” Berman says. “It's about facing those obstacles head on, and making a resolution to say, ‘I'm going to change this about myself and my environment.’”

After the name change, Resolution was scheduled for screenings at the Omni Theater in Fort Worth, and that it earned a spot at SXSW 2025.

The Omni opened in 1983 and was one of the first venues like that to utilize IMAX technology.

Of course, Berman is a fan of immersive venues like this. He mentioned the Sphere in Las Vegas, as well as the newly built Cosm theater in Grand Prairie. In spite of these massive technological innovations, the Omni still stands out to him.

“In our opinion, this is the second best theater in the whole United States,” he says.

At the Sky Theater, the film was projected in 4k format. The Omni screens in 8k. When the opportunity came about, Berman and Hartsell had to resize and rescale the entire film to fit.

“They’re used to working in this flat space where it’s 16:9 or 4:3,” Berman says of the screen formatting. “We have to take that format of artwork and transfer it into a dome experience. It’s a huge process.”

Upon test screenings of the film in 8k, the two noticed a number of distortions due to the drastic change in image quality.

“There’s no hiding,” Hartsell says. “Every pixel matters. It’s kind of like watching an old movie’s special effects on VHS on an old TV. It looks great because it’s all nasty looking. When you see that same film in HD, you see the seams and the cracks.”

Resolution opens at the Omni on March 1. Presented in part by the Lone Star Film Festival and Visit Fort Worth, the event will begin with a cocktail hour from 6:30-7:30 p.m., with the film beginning immediately after. Following the film, The Polyphonic Spree will perform live around 9 p.m. Resolution is slated for 300 screenings at the Omni in 2025, a vast uptick from the 2-3 showings on weekends at the Sky.

Resolution was accepted into the SXSW XR Experience Exhibition, a wing of the festival typically reserved for small-scale tech and VR sets. To bring Resolution to life, they’ve partnered with California-based Fulldome Pro to build a physical dome in Austin for the film to be screened.

Hartsell has experience in the XR category at SXSW, premiering a couple short films in VR format over the years. The standard booth in the XR category is about 10 x 10 feet, but Resolution will get a 30 x 40 foot screen with the constructed dome theater inside.

“My previous experiences maybe had two to three headsets at a time,” Hartsell says. “So you’re limited to how many people you could get through your experience within the day.”

The dome being built for the film will be able to seat about 25 people inside. It premieres at SXSW on March 8, with screenings running through March 11.

Berman and Hartsell say that they plan to take the film on the road to more festivals as the year progresses, but nothing is confirmed yet. They’re also interested in using the film’s concept on other music. As for the future, they’re operating as Cinephonic, a production company specializing on bringing music to its cinematic life.

“It’s a communal experience,” Hartsell says. “VR is awesome, but it’s an isolated experience. This you get to share with a group of people. You get to feed off of them, which is way more valuable.”