The Drop is a fusion of immersive theatrical theatre and escape room experience, by the award-winning creative studio Swamp Motel. The studio’s online creation Plymouth Point, an immersive, interactive, cross-platform thriller in the digital space, was born from the need to create something within the restrictive parameters of lockdown and was followed by The Mermaid’s Tongue and The Kindling Hour.
The Drop is a return to the company’s roots in live theatre, as the team continue with their strategy of drawing from a theatrical background to create thrilling experiences.
Introducing The Drop’s creators
Swamp Motel‘s founders are Ollie Jones and Clem Garritty, creative associates of Punchdrunk, founders of Kill the Beast and members of Curious Directive and FellSwoop.
Its managing director is Daniel Hemsley, who studied theatre at Warwick University with Jones and Garrity before moving into the corporate space.
“Swamp Motel started in about 2017, 2018,” Hemsley tells blooloop. “The founders and creative directors, Ollie and Clem, have a background in theatre. We know each other from studying theatre and performance together at Warwick for our undergrad.
“Those guys went off and forged a career in the theatre world, which saw them found a theatre company, Kill the Beast and create four fringe theatre shows as well as podcasts, which they took around the UK and got all sorts of acclaim.”
They were, by this point, realising that, acclaim aside, theirs was unlikely to be a financially rewarding way of life. However:
“They were asked to contribute to a brand experience and to write the script. They thought, ‘This is exactly what we do, without the creative flair or passion.’”
This would be the genesis of Swamp Motel.
Making experiences
Describing the thought process, Hemsley says:
“If you took what we do, which is draw on a theatre toolkit to make interesting, creative experiences, that, at the time, for Kill the Beast, were limited to theatre and podcasts, how would that look like for a brand?”
A brand, he contends, can throw money at something and yet it will remain just spectacle, and quite boring. However, if that money is targeted better, and a degree of professionalism brought in, it can achieve so much more:
“It may as well be the best that it could be,” he says. “If you apply that budget in the type of work that we make, we could make an experience. This is how I used to pitch it: that for the participant it would feel like stepping into a film.”
The business was born, he explains, with its first real project, which was to launch the Kensington branch of Dishoom:
“At the time they had taken over an art deco building in Kensington and wanted to tell a story about the venue in a more immersive and interactive way. Our first production was Night at the Bombay Roxy, an immersive dining experience with Dishoom.”
Pandemic drives innovation
While Jones and Garritty had gone into the theatre world on graduating from Warwick, Hemsley went into the corporate space:
“My background is in consulting. Ollie and Clem said, ‘We’ve started a business. Do you know how to run a business?’ I didn’t, but together, we figured it out.”
The pandemic drove digital innovation, mostly through necessity, in immersive theatre as well as in other fields. Hemsley says:
“We had always had plans to do independent work eventually, and were developing independent ideas alongside the brand experience work, but none of them had seen the light of day. From our point of view, the brand experience world slowed down, which meant we had a bit more time, but, obviously, theatre ground to a halt, too.
“All our work previously had been site-specific and site-responsive, meaning we’d have to adapt it to the venue. All venues closed, so the only venue we could adapt it to became the internet.”
Blurring the boundaries
They had already begun to experiment with blurring the boundaries between forms.
“In my mind, theatre is experiencing a show from a seat,” Hemsley explains. “Immersive theatre pulls you from that seat. We had already been developing an approach that made it feel as if the action was happening to you. What we liked was that you were stepping into something that felt like you were a protagonist; it was your story to move through and drive forward.”
We are seeing what agency means to us, and it means being directly involved in the story. It shouldn’t feel like you are watching someone else go through it; you are going through yourself.
“Obviously, we had been doing that always in conjunction with clients. Those could be very B2B, like bringing brand messages to life in quite immersive ways, but the messaging could be quite boilerplate. In more exciting ways, we worked with Capcom to launch Resident Evil 2 and turned the Bargehouse on the South Bank into a zombie-infested police station.
“With this idea in mind, we are seeing what agency means to us, and it means being directly involved in the story. It shouldn’t feel like you are watching someone else go through it; you are going through yourself.”
Expanding the story-world
The team had been experimenting with these techniques for some of the work that they were doing with clients, where they started telling the story in advance, expanding that story-world and giving people a way to access it on the internet:
“An example was a Halloween party we did for Verizon media. For this, the narrative the guest experienced as an attendee was that there was a circus. This was called Madame Mesmer’s Bizarre Bazaar and mysteriously appeared once every hundred years. When it appeared, it left a mess in its wake, and people vanished. It was very mysterious.”
Some of that story was told on the internet and sent out alongside the invitations. The rest of the world-building was there for those who took the time to explore:
“There was a way to get more of that story, if you wanted, that would enhance your experience on the day. It was a small-scale test of an interesting way we could build on what happens in the venue.”
Before The Drop: online experience
The move to the online work was a response to where audiences were going.
“We were stuck at home doing pub quizzes and thought there must be something more entertaining we could be doing. We wondered whether we could deliver an immersive show online. In some ways, we’re probably tough critics of ourselves. We’re not going to do something that’s not of interest. We’re always trying to push the boundaries in terms of how to make something the best that it can be.”
The challenge, then, was to create a visceral, live experience delivered to audiences through their computer. It was, he says, very much an experiment.
“It was a calculated experiment in the sense that we thought it was possible. We said, ‘Well, we like this.’ And essentially, the internet means we are used to spending loads of time absorbing loads of stories, some of which are true, some of which are not, observing people and understanding narratives, some inherent, some not.
“We’re used to doing that online. Could we construct a story and set of circumstances that would pull you into a narrative and an immersive experience that should, if we’re doing our job right, get your heart beating and excite you at a time when we couldn’t leave the house or do anything with friends?”
Engaging stories
Hemsley references Don’t Fuck with Cats [the disturbing Netflix true-crime documentary about the internet manhunt for killer Luka Magnotta], and similar concepts, where people become deeply involved with the strange stories on the internet.
“We wanted to probe that a little, and tell a story that could hook people in,” he says. “And then, in Plymouth Point, which was very low budget on its release, we came across technology where we could inject video into a chat, and make it seem that you were speaking to somebody.
“The setup is that you, as an audience member, feel as though you are having a live conversation. A lot of people finish the show and say, ‘Was that person really there?’
“We started having loads of fun blurring that line between stories and reality, and causing audiences to ask, ‘Is this thing real? Am I on somebody’s social media page? Should I be accessing these emails? Should I be reading this? Those are all really interesting questions for audiences to be asking themselves.”
Plymouth Point
It was, he reiterates, still an experiment:
“We weren’t sure if there would be an appetite for it. But we tried to make something – Plymouth Point, the first in the series – that we would really like, and that our friends would really like. And then we showed it to a few clients.”
“We got some quite positive feedback on the first half. Then we finished developing it and launched it as the very first direct, consumer-facing thing we’d ever done. We’d always worked with brands before. From there it got picked up by the Guardian and got a really nice review. We realised people liked it, and then we had to scale it up and professionalise it a bit.”
Early tech troubles
In its initial iteration, the word he uses to describe Plymouth Rock is ‘authentic’:
“You do interact with everyday internet technologies, and some of them were getting a bit confused, especially when we first started having audiences from China, from Saudi Arabia, logging into the shared inboxes. At the time, these were hosted on Google.
“The story does live on this surface level of the internet that everybody can access; in some cases, if you figure out the passwords, you can find out more information. But we had to strike a line of where that could and couldn’t work at a scalable point.”
Leading to The Drop
In terms of how the online experiences led on to The Drop, he says:
“With Plymouth Point, we realised that we had told a part of a bigger story. Some of that is how we like to develop world-building: the sense that there is more happening, that you’re tapping into more than just the hour or the 45 minutes that you spend with us. When we realised that there was a continued audience for Plymouth Point and that we weren’t necessarily coming out of lockdown anytime soon, we developed a sequel.”
At this point they had to choose between creating a new story, or continuing the one they had already established:
“We decided to continue telling that story, and the sequel was, arguably, bigger and more successful.”
Technology improves
More sophisticated technology might have played a role in this:
“We released Plymouth Point on Zoom. To start the game, you joined the Zoom call at a specified time.”
“With The Mermaid’s Tongue, we took on the technology ourselves. So we built a video conferencing/theatre stack fused together to deliver the experiences. We then delivered the third instalment, The Kindling Hour, on the system. We have retrospectively upgraded Plymouth Point to be delivered on it, too. There was quite a big technology component, and I was having to step more into that.”
Fact or fiction?
Across the trilogy, the team enjoyed blurring the distinction between fiction and fact.
Hemsley says:
“Audiences wonder, ‘If I get a text from a character, what does that mean? How else can I be brought into that world? I’m on a video call, but then there are websites and then my phone is being used. And then what if this happens? Is that a real website, or a fake website? Is it fake information on a real website?’”
“This blurring evolved across the sequel and then into the third instalment, where we started using what were essentially cinematic techniques. There are almost cut scenes, which was a further evolution of how we could bring other media, like video, alongside phones and laptop screens and everything else. And then we thought, well, what’s next?”
Having wrapped up the trilogy, they realised they could take everything they had learned in terms of technology and the best use of a theatrical toolkit, and redeploy it in a live context.
“What we love doing is putting audiences in the centre of an experience so that they feel as though it’s happening to them; as if it is a film they have stepped into.”
New adventure with The Drop
With The Drop, they explore how it feels to step into a James Bond-type thriller.
“From there,” he says, “a lot of the techniques [revolve] around the idea that it is exciting and interesting not to be sure where the show starts and finishes. When you walk into a typical immersive experience, they take your phone off you.
“However, we wondered what it would be like if we made an experience that used your phone, but still held your attention in a way that meant you won’t be checking Instagram because you’re so absorbed in the experience.”
He describes the experience:
“You arrive at a location that is in the universe that we established in the Iskander trilogy. It looks like a normal office building. You have an invitation to a meeting on the third floor. As you step into the lift, a series of events unfold. Your morning, afternoon or evening does not go as intended.
“A story happens to you that we invite you to figure your way out across. We use the terminology ‘an immersive escape experience’. There is a story and a narrative, and you access those through escape room dynamics. For instance, puzzles, and, in some cases, locks and keys and things to be figured out. The commonality between what we do online and what we do in the real world is getting you to understand story points and information to then move through the narrative.”
A tense experience
The Drop is tense and atmospheric, he says, rather than scary:
“I’m not a big scary movie person; I haven’t seen any scary movies. The only one I couldn’t escape as a kid was The Shining. But I’ve refused to watch any others, it’s just too scary for me. I don’t find this experience scary at all, but some people come out saying, ‘That was terrifying.’
“There is a tension that we play with, and that we want you to engage in. It’s not designed as a terror experience; it’s designed to be exciting, exhilarating, and, potentially, adrenaline-fuelled.”
The online games are immersive and compelling in a completely new way; The Drop takes this a whole dimension further.
Hemsley attributes this to putting the narrative first:
“We use the mechanics to move you through the narrative. I think a lot of people have mechanics, and then sprinkle the narrative on top. Escape rooms are fun, but we do think we’re doing something different. It’s more about a way to engage people in the story.”
Pushing boundaries
Taking everything online, in some ways, made everything easier:
“There were a lot of amazing opportunities to make that story feel unique and special, as though it was happening to the participant. We really wanted to adopt some of those, but then push it further, when it was live.”
“I know I’ve said this a lot, but I think the other area where we really pushed the boundaries was in blurring the lines between what is real and what is not real, what’s actually happening, and what isn’t. As an audience member, you will be processing that as you go through, aware that those lines are being blurred in real-time.”
The Drop: COVID-safe entertainment
The Drop is COVID-safe.
“You don’t mix with large groups of people, unlike other immersive experiences. You go through The Drop in your group of four. Obviously, that suits what we set out to do in terms of making it feel like it’s happening to you. You aren’t walking around a large space with hundreds of other people; it’s much more intimate. You go in with your bubble of three other people, and you leave with that bubble of people.”
There is, he feels, an interesting and productive future for immersive theatrical experiences where the line between real life and fiction is blurred, and where the players are instrumental in driving their experience, rather than having it served to them – a trend increasingly driven by gaming.
“It’s something we want to keep exploring,” he says. “I think there is a business model challenge with these things, and then there’s a creative solution.
“We are interested in blurring those lines and seeing what else we can do to make people feel as though the experience is happening to them. The more that they get that experience in other places, be those video games or a VR experience, the more interest there will be.
“We find virtual and augmented reality interesting and exciting. But I think we are way more interested in carving out a niche where we use everyday technology to make the story feel a bit more real.”
The Drop & the future of Swamp Motel
BAFTA-winning, immersive media specialist and the founder of Limina Immersive, Catherine Allen, described Plymouth Point as ‘virtual reality without the headset’:
“I think that’s what we’re going for.”
In terms of the target audience:
“Is it an immersive experience? Is it an escape room experience? We hope that it can appeal to both,” Hemsley says. “But I would say of our work in general that it should be a universally enjoyable experience.”
The team shies away from some of the immersive experience and escape room prerequisites. For instance, actor interaction and maintaining a conversation. This is because they disrupt the delicately constructed sense of being a part of the world:
“In our world, you are the protagonist. If someone says, ’What are you doing here?’ you will think, ‘Well, what is my role? I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ We like to be very clear about what your role is. We have all the excitement and the world-building of an immersive experience, without any of that awkward putting-you-on-the-spot.”
In the longer term:
“We are excited to try and answer that question a bit differently about the other things that we could turn our hand to. For me, The Drop shows how we can take an audience and excite them, then send them further into a story. We are in the midst of exploring other things that this would be suitable for, and hope to be announcing some exciting things in the near future.”
Top image: The Drop, credit Mark Senior
