I still didn’t really believe at this stage that I would go through with the whole project but I had shot my mouth off so much about it that people kept asking me how it was going. I needed to make some advances simply so that I had something to tell people!

I already had a Make-up artist - Simon Crane. He had been into the project from the beginning and loved the idea of doing some zombies. My next goal was to find a producer. A good producer could help me bring all of the elements together, find a crew, maybe find some funding and generally make my little fantasy a reality. So I rang around, looking for any leads from any contacts I had.

Meanwhile I was thinking about funding. I knew that my local Film Board had some short film funding schemes but the deadlines were so far away and, even then, the chances of having ‘Detained’ selected were slim. I knew, if I waited that long, I would lose momentum and this would never happen. I would probably have to make this for nothing.

But having no budget does not make finding a producer all that easy! How can a producer manage something and get the best out of something that doesn’t exist? I was beginning to face the reality that I was going to have to take that role myself. Time was moving on and I wasn’t making any headway.

So I began to gather what elements I could. Through contacts, I had got in touch with a place called the Independent Theatre Workshop in Dublin, an acting school and talent agency for kids. Gillian Oman in there agreed kindly to help out and let me cast some of her kids. I’m sure she didn’t realise how long this would take so she’s probably wondering now what the hell happened to the project. I have to say that I had written it with the idea that I would never find any decent young actors. I was very wrong. We did a little casting session and found, not one, but many great young actors. I began to get excited at this stage because I instantly saw how this could be even better than I had ever hoped.

So I found our main actors, Ciaran O’Brien and Ben Morris. This was going well.

I needed some adult actors too. We were watching Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ one lunchtime at work and I said how I’d love to get Jarlath Conroy for the part of McAlester. The mental image I had in my head was a little older but then that movie was made quite some time ago so he would be a little older. I set about tracking him down.

While doing this, I was trying to figure out the realities of the shoot, not that easy for someone with no experience in live action. I had prop lists and requirement lists. I needed a cameraman, a camera, a sound man with equipment. I desperately needed an Assistant Director to help out. Without a producer, a good AD would be essential on the shoot. Most of these things I was having a terribly hard time getting. It seems that everyone was busy around town with nice work that actually paid money. I couldn’t compete with that.

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I also needed to track down a location. The mental image of the school was the school that I had attended, Sutton Park School. That was my only real frame of reference for school layouts.

I decided to contact them to see what the chances were of shooting there but I knew it would be tough. After all, this was a horror short with a few nasty elements. I knew that the shoot would be fun and the whole project wasn’t all that serious but how do you explain that to someone who just thinks - horror, kids, no way?

I was so wrong to assume that would be the thinking though. The new head of the school, a man named Anthony Blackman, was all for it. Not only that, but he agreed with many of the messages behind the short..

I now had some actors and a location.

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I had tracked Jarlath Conroy to a theatre company in New York. They forwarded an email from me to his agent who, in turn, forwarded it to him. One evening the phone rang. I heard this big American voice on the other end. No prizes for guessing who it was. A couple of conversations and a few emails later, I sent him the script and Jarlath Conroy was on board.

I was like a giddy schoolgirl!

But now the pressure was on. I couldn’t have Jarlath Conroy fly all the way from New York to Dublin to shoot some amateur production with a bloke, his mates and a video camera. This was now a serious production.

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Through a few different contacts, I found Noel Donnellon - a cameraman. He had worked on films like ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Reign of Fire’ and more. And he was available to shoot ‘Detained’. He would turn out to be one of the most important people there as he knew lighting set ups and the general running of productions. Sound was still a problem right up to the shoot date. I knew one of our crew members, Patrick Kickham, was familiar with sound equipment and, when it hit time to shoot, he was the nearest person we had to a sound recordist.

The time of the shoot had arrived. I had no AD, a tiny crew and no sense of organisation. I had a shooting schedule that I made with the help of an Assistant Director who couldn’t make the shoot, Barbara Mulcahy (thanks!), and that was the only thing that really had any order to it. This was going to be nuts and I knew it, but it was far, far too late to back out!

 

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