Taiwan’s New Box Office Hit ‘Detention’

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An adaptation of a survivor horror game of the same name developed by independent game outfit Red Candle Games, “Detention” chronicles a sad period of history at Greenwood High School in the 1960s during Taiwan’s White Terror era, when the authoritarian Kuomintang (KMT) regime ruthlessly suppressed any form of dissent.

It is the only domestically made film to gross more than NT$100 million in its first week at theaters this year.

The game version features a complex mix of myth and fact, interspersed with the need to collect clues and props. Consequently, the narrative jumps around, and all of the sub-plots are designed to keep the players moving forward. All that seems to remain of the central story line is found either early in the game experience or at its very end.

The movie is different, however. Though it remains a psychological horror film adapted from a video game, “Detention” is inevitably centered around characters and tells the story in a way that is straightforward and easy to understand. Under such circumstances, the music became an extremely important tool.

The head of Just Busy Music Studio, Shuon Tsai, had made music for seven years for movies, video games and commercials, and was the lead violinist in a 40-person orchestra that performed the musical score accompanying the film.

At the beginning of September, Tsai and more than 800 people crowded into the Ambassador Theatre in Ximending for the film’s first large-scale special screening. By the time the final credits rolled down, he was overtaken by goose bumps.

Seeing one of the major achievements of his life on the big screen, Tsai was like a video game player busy solving puzzles, trying to match music to different scenes.

“When we were recording, none of the musicians could see images [from the movie]. Only the conductor could. It was only when we saw the movie that we were able to see how the music was arranged,” Tsai says.

Inextricably Linked with the Plot

Right at the start of the film, as students at a school begin belting out the national flag anthem – “Magnificent mountains and rivers, with bountiful and diverse goods….” – the trumpets blare, the strings emerge, and the main male character Wei Chung-ting appears for the first time.

But as the story takes sudden twists and turns, Wei awakens to the reality of Taiwan’s authoritarian regime. The trumpet remains an integral part of the music that follows him but the notes from the flag anthem are reversed, creating a musical refrain sustained through the rest of the film. When Instructor Bai, a representative of the authoritarian KMT’s goons, appears, the pitch of the accompanying music suddenly fluctuates out of whack, and the sound of the brass section creates a sense of pressure and unease.

The design of the music and its reverberating echoes led Tsai, who is accustomed to deconstructing sound, to realize that, “a score is not just background sound. It incorporates images and is inextricably linked with the plot.”

Some 40 people were assembled to perform the musical score for box office hit “Detention,” a scale rarely seen in Taiwan’s film industry. (Source: Lu Luming)

“I’m very picky when it comes to sound. I didn’t want to go the traditional route with the score, with only suspense and terror. I also wanted a more electronic feel, but it couldn’t be too electronic because this is still a very human story,” says “Detention” director John Hsu.

To meet this exacting standard, Hsu chose Lu Luming to take the lead on the score.

A Commercial yet Experimental Project

Lu previously received a Golden Bell Award for best sound effects for his work on the thriller series “Close Your Eyes Before It’s Dark” and was nominated for a Golden Horse Award for best original movie score for his work on “Xiao Mei.” To strengthen the connection between the movie’s score and script, he designed a representative melody for each of the main characters and embedding them in the background. The approach prompted associations with scenes at various points in the movie, enabling sharp-eared viewers to discover several treasures.

“He is an expert in electronics, noise, and synthesizers, but also has a good classical base,” Hsu says. Lu’s score for “Detention,” in fact, encapsulates the majestic, robust elements of commercial movies with a strong experimental bent.

When he was first contemplating the concept for the film’s soundtrack, Lu looked at an unedited version of the film without special effects that already had musical accompaniment.

“Although that original reference had a lot of feeling, I wanted to see if I could outdo the director and create a new style,” Lu says.

“Simply put, we used an orchestra to do what a synthesizer does,” he says. “Also, this is a Taiwan story. So from the beginning I decided everything should be MIT [made in Taiwan] to give the movie a more cohesive feel.”

Because of budget constraints and the limited size of recording spaces at home, Taiwanese movie productions that want to use an orchestra for their scores tend to go overseas to record and look for foreign musicians. That made the group of 40 percussionists and string and wind musicians who comprised the orchestra that performed “Detention’s” score large by Taiwan standards. They completed their recording in the Yucheng Recording Studio, a facility developed from an abandoned theater near the Songshan Train Station in Taipei.

Source: Lu Luming

A Patchwork Orchestra Making Odd Noises

Taiwan does not have a dedicated professional orchestra to make commercial music tracks or film soundtracks because of the lack of demand, meaning that Lu had to assemble his ensemble of 40 musicians one by one. Some came from the Just Busy Music Studio, while others were recruited from the Taiwan Philharmonic and the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra.

Lu studied various violin and cello-playing techniques and asked the musicians to play their instruments in unconventional ways, including using an irregular wavy bow movement or playing their instruments upside down. The result was a panoply of rough, chaotic sounds seeped with nervous tension, similar to the sound of wood being sawed.

“He had the string ensemble and percussionists make noise while quietly adding some electronic synthesized elements, generating an atmosphere of psychological madness tinged with lonely and eerie vibes,” Hsu says.

Before the formal recording of the score, Lu and Hsu met with the lead musicians to go over the film and give them a sense of how scenes are cut a feel for the story.

“We were worried the musicians would get angry with us and through a thick pack of sheet music at us,” Hsu says.

“If we had played the violin like this in the past, our teachers would scold us. It would have been 100 percent unacceptable,” Tsai of Just Busy Music Studio says.

The unique use of the bow generated a beauty of its own, and because every musician’s technique was different, every recording was unique to the world. No matter how advanced the canned special effects sounds generated by computers, they could not replace the inspiration of each musician as they performed.

“Detention” was made with a budget of NT$90 million over a period of two and a half years. The score was done after filming was completed, and it took four months from the time work began on developing the creative concept to recording and mixing.

Source: 1 Production Film Co.

When catchphrases such as “White Terror” and “transitional justice” come up, Lu blurts out: “I was very concerned!” In that sense, he unconsciously felt a certain responsibility and sense of mission in participating in the making of this film.

“If we did everything we could and made this a popular commercial film, everyone could understand the era in which it is set. Only with such understanding can there be reconciliation, which is ultimately the true meaning and value of this film,” Lu says.

Understanding Oneself through Film

Beyond Lu, the film’s credits reveal the participation of many leading Taiwanese movie technicians, including: sound effects directors Dennis Tsao and Book Chien, who made widespread of expressive sounds; art director Wang Chih-cheng, who brought back Greenwood High School as it was at the time; cinematography director Chou Yi-hsien, whose sensual, intuitive shots broke ground from the traditional thiller; and visual effects director Tomi Kuo, who took charge of all of the movie’s special effects.

Every one of their contributions drew positive reviews from critics after the film’s release. It was not surprising therefore, that “Detention” received the most nominations for this year’s Golden Horse Awards with 12, including for best new director, best narrative feature, best visual effects, best art direction, best original film score and best sound effects.

“The ceiling for our industry is so low, but fortunately there were many creative people who really liked the story and wanted to do more than simply take the job and get it over with,” Hsu says days before the Golden Horse nominations were announced on Oct. 1, stressing several times that the people working around him often came to his rescue.

Why is it that “Detention” was able to attract so many creative talents who fully immersed themselves in the production?

“All creators of cultural content, no matter what they’ve done, have to face the same questions: Who are you? Where do you belong? During the creative process, finding a sense of belonging is very important, because we essentially get to know ourselves through creating,” Hsu says.

Hsu has been a huge game fan since he was young, and the first day the video game “Detention” came out, he quickly got through every level only to realize when the concluding image popped up that he had been shedding tears.

He knew that this was a good story belonging to Taiwan’s collective memory, because under the authoritarianism during the White Terror period, the blurred lines between good and evil were destined to lead to tragedy.

Hoping to expose this period in history to youth who do not play video games, Hsu began shooting the movie, and in the end what he produced is more than just a horror film set at a school. It in fact chronicles a changing Taiwanese society and brings to light how the many things taken for granted today, such as freedom and democracy, came about through great sacrifice. In that sense, this journey back into time gives hope that justice can be extended to victims of this history and help society confront this dark past.

Cover image: 1Production Film Co.