Dr oKtopUs is the alter-ego of top UK session drummer Craig Blundell. Spherics have been working with Craig since he first approached us in 2005 to create his main web page, an ambitious flash development with original soundtrack and a unique look and feel.

So when Craig approached us again with an idea for a web site for his latest project, we were delighted to help. We had already created the logo and artwork for the first Dr oKtopUs album, so we felt we already had a good understanding of the music and what Craig was trying to get across to his audience. The nature of Craig’s Dr oKtopUs music (virtuoso level drum’n’bass) has very dark overtones, and we wanted to produce a site that would capture this, build on the album art, and evoke a disturbing and unsettling atmosphere throughout, but also provide his fanbase and new listeners with all the resources they would need to find out about dr oKtopUs and his music in an environment that was rewarding, exciting (and not TOO scary!) to explore.

Craig had suggested that we should try and emulate the atmosphere found in the SAW horror films – he liked the gritty and grainy look and feel of the films, and we took this base concept and developed it into an idea for a site based around mental disturbance, and dark confined spaces. For this reason we chose to build a flash site that appeared to be stuttery video shot on a 16mm camera for a very unsettling, constantly shifting mood. It would have horror-influenced elements, and would be very graphically lo-fi and gritty. But first we needed to envision how Craig would appear as dr oKtopUs and so devised a photoshoot at a burned out and derelict building which would feature him wrapped in a straightjacket and chains giving the impression that he lived captive in the dark, which we thought would compliment his music and the feel of the project. Craig was very keen on the idea, so we set about visiting various potential photoshoot locations.

Initial photography was completed in one morning’s shoot once we had found the perfect location, a derelict and fire damaged club, quite local to us beside the A3 in Surrey. It required careful planning as we knew that we'd like to make the photography interact with the viewers menu choices.

Over 200 photos were taken, and we worked closely with Craig to choose the best which would feature in his site, and carefully edited them to give a desaturated, bleak and grainy sort of feel that incorporated his logo wherever we could. As we didn't have time to actually spray paint his logo onto the walls, we chose to composite it into the photos in post production.

Production Challenges

We chose to create the main body of the site in Flash because it would allow us to use detailed and stylised animation, consistently high quality streaming sound that continued no matter which page of the site users visited (we didn't want to use frames) and would allow the photography to interact with viewers' movements on the site. However, we wanted the main text content of the site to be HTML for search engine and accessibility reasons, so we designed the site to be a hybrid of the 2 technologies. We also needed to incorporate Craig's many and various social networking links into the site, so our approach would have to accomodate that as well. After much discussion and experimentation, our software development team found a way of overlaying transparent HTML content over the flash work, which fulfilled all these requirements, and we set about building the site.

Sound works

Our scary visuals were only going to be effective if the sound track for the site matched their intensity, so we wrote a 5 minute piece that incorporated original musical themes, assorted foley content, and recorded custom sound design elements that reflected the visual themes. These included clanking chains, fingernails down chalkboards, bending saws, and various metalwork rattles that all came together to produce the perfect intro music for the site. We also had to compose sound effects for various points in the intro animation and source the sound of a 16mm camcorder, something that runs independently of the main music track, and even continues when sound is turned off by the viewers so that the atmosphere of the site is not lost. We also built a custom player themed to the site so viewers could also hear a selection of dr oKtopUs album tracks.

The Hidden Realm

Craig is very keen on hidden features online, so we made sure that we devised 3 of these for inclusion in the site. We left clues on several pages that would hint at where these might be, and awarded prizes for finding them to viewers that included new album tracks, exclusive interviews with Craig (also produced and recorded in the field by ourselves), and downloadable backdrops, which we also created.

When the site went live in June 2010 we were rewarded by hundreds of great comments from his fanbase, and thousands of hits on the site, all of which were viewable by our client because of the statistics systems we had put in place while the site was being built. Craig himself was very pleased with our work, and everyone involved had an excellent time working on the project. We can't wait to be involved in the release of his second album !