Well ‘Detained’ began really in the beginning of 2003. The idea had been floating around for some time but the first piece of writing on it was done in mid January. The concept had developed from an earlier idea I had which was simply a man’s realisation of the mundane nature of his life. I took that idea and brought it back to where things started to go wrong - school. Being a huge fan of zombie movies, I couldn’t resist throwing in the idea of a kid watching his class become zombies around him and that idea threw me off in a slightly different direction and led me to, eventually, ‘Detained’.

The early versions were simply called ‘Zombie School’ as I had no idea what to call the project. This image contains a little excerpt from the earliest, incomplete, version of the script when the main character was called ‘Eric’ and it had a lot more interaction between the kids in detention. This incarnation seemed to get caught up in the relationships between all of the students and the plot was having a very hard time advancing so it was dumped at this stage.

I went back to basics and wrote simple notes on what it should be about. It was a simple escape story and, although the ideas has come from bigger ideas, the plot should be basic and small. So this led me to just the two main characters - Mark and, what was now, Doyle. This time around, there was no interaction with the other students. The only other characters with lines were McAlester, the detention supervisor, and Heinz, the principal.

McAlester really set things in motion and then Heinz would take over, as if Doyle’s encounters were moving him up the school hierarchy. This is a little excerpt with the beginning of Doyle’s encounter with Heinz. Much later, just before shooting, we cut Heinz from the script completely. I was very happy with the character but it seemed that he was really taking us backwards rather than forwards so we replaced him with a much more basic encounter with Mr.Bush, the caretaker. One of Heinz’ speeches would remain, however, as a voice over.

When ‘Detained’ has been out there for a while, I’ll put the original versions of the scripts up here in their entirety. So, I bounced the script back and forth with my Creative Consultant, Derak Landy, who had written an Irish Film called ‘Dead Bodies’ and we eventually came up with a version I was very happy with.

 

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So the next stage was to storyboard the whole thing. I knew that, funding or no funding, I was going to be at a disadvantage having never really shot live action before so my plan was to use all of the skill I had developed with animation and apply them to this process. In animation, there are no real edits or cuts because of the cost of production. You only animate what you are going to use. As a result, the storyboards have to be completely locked off and quite detailed. It’s like you do the editing process in advance.

That’s what I wanted to do with ‘Detained’. So every shot was drawn, panel by panel, until I had a very complete picture of the final film. This was a very long process and involved lots of cutting and pasting as I shifted scenes around, cut shots, added shots and generally played around with the feel of the whole thing. Here are some storyboards from the unshot sections in which Doyle encounters Mr.Heinz, the headmaster.

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Once I had the whole storyboard complete, I knew I had to actually make it. I had to figure out just how I was going to pull this off. And, judging by the amount of shots and the complexity of the storyboard, I knew I had thrown myself into the deep end. I had to shift from my role as a creator to the role of producer.

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