Cutaways.

Anyone involved in film or TV will know the importance of cutaways. Well, you'd like to think so, at least.

For those of you know don't know, a cutaway is defined as 'interruption of a continuously-filmed action by inserting a view of something else. It is usually followed by a cutback to the first shot, but not always' (thank you Wikipedia for your detailed explanation - check out the article of you want to know more).

Basically, they make the action clearer; they give you detail on a character's movements or actions; they help the film make sense. A character says he needs to be somewhere at 2pm and sneakily looks at his watch, and then you see a closeup of the the watch and you know from the fact that it says 2.15 that he's running late. Vital information is revealed, the plot progresses - hooray!

Funnily enough, for whatever reason, 'Pisces, Arise!' is almost entirely cutaway free. I could say that this was a bold new film making technique where we draw the audience entirely into the world of the characters; immersing them so deeply that we never want to draw them away by distracting shots that are not relevant to the deeper emotional state of the characters.

Or, I could say that we just forgot. It happens. Especially when you're making your first film, you're short on time, everyone is a bit stressed, and it's 2am on your first shoot day and you're already six days behind schedule.

We've cleverly faked a few cutaways (don't ask how), but the issue is often that a bad /incorrectly filmed cutaway is even worse than having no cutaways at all.

Garth Marenghi's Dark Place, one of my favourite shows, uses bad cutaways to hilarious effect in some of the episodes.

And the good people from Full Frontal also have a very amusing sketch -more about news-related cutaways, but nevertheless very funny. Check it out below.

What the hell?

So. I haven't explained what this film is about, really. And I though I'd better do that, given that I'm currently going off on all kinds of tangents in this blog. So, here's the 'official' summary.

Grant is not having the greatest run at life. He works a dead-end job in a fish and chip shop, is hounded by his porn-loving boss for being an 'oofty', and is in desperately in love with Kiera, who works at the fancy bagel store next door.
But when Grant's obsession with ebay shopping yields a mysterious spellbook that just happens to be real, things take a turn for the unusual.Through the power of the Dark Arts, Grant just might have the chance to win Kiera's heart - but was man really meant to meddle in such things?





Does this film make any sense to you now? If so, good. Maybe you can explain it to me later on.

So. Many. Nerds.

T-Dex and I are kinda nerdish at times - especially when it comes to history, volcanoes, excruciating and bizarre deaths, and freakish preservation of past horrors. In fact, all of these are themes that run strongly through 'Pisces, Arise'. Except for the bit about volcanoes... although, if we were to pretend that Kiera's house was actually inside a giant volcano, that would explain the extreme overlighting in the kitchen scenes.

Anyway, needless to say, we were both over the moon when the Pompeii exhibition came to the Melbourne Museum.

We've put off visiting the exhibition for a while, largely due to the fact that we're both hugely popular and have rich, full social lives. Either that, or we both work too much and have developed anxieties about large crowds and social situations.

But, with the last weekend looming, we decided to head out tonight. Since I hate lining up for anything, I thought I'd go online and book tickets - only to find that the exhibition is so vastly popular that they've divided the days up into hour-long blocks, which need to be pre-booked. And the only remaining slots were 6am Saturday morning, or 10pm Saturday night.

What gives? Since when did Mt Vesuvius gain such rock-star acclaim? Even the Star Wars exhibition at Scienceworks hasn't garnered the need to allocate timeslots - and there are some pretty awesome Star Wars nerds out there.

So, come 10pm Saturday night, you'll find us at the Melbourne Museum, pre-booked ticket in hand, to see a bunch of wine jars, volcano-simulators, and bits of plaster cast...probably gibbering like idiots because we're so damn excited. And because it's the latest we've been out on a Saturday night for months.

If that doesn't make us the coolest creative team in Melbourne, then I don't know WHAT does.

Not Actually Us.

The Excordis that you find here is not actually us...although they are the reason that we cannot purchase our domain name of choice.

Contrary to popular belief, we are a bunch of people who like writing and producing things, and not some kind of service aimed at people with enough time and cash to laze around in the Mediterranean.

This particular Excordis should, however, consult a Latin dictionary before naming their next business.

Nothing Dies on the Internet.

Recently I stumbled across the original Excordis website, made with trusty ole Angelfire back in the days when making your own website was, quite frankly, the realm of coders and nerds. In fact, the internet had only been publicly available for TWO WHOLE YEARS, so anything web-related was new and scary.

Given that Trev and I were yet to fully develop our full nerd potential, and hiring a web developer probably would have cost us around $20,000, we opted for Angelfire's delightful selection of customizable templates, paying little heed to any kind of design consistency or colour principles.

The result is probably the world's worst website - yet, for some reason, it's still floating around...in fact, when you google Excordis, it's one of the first things that comes up.

Proof that nothing on the internet ever really goes away.

Check it out, if you must - but don't judge us.

Where have you been all my life?

As 2009 draws to a close, many of you will be wondering exactly what the deal is with this film, and why you haven't heard of it before.

Well, kiddies, it's been a long ride.

The Pisces journey began in early 2006, when long-time creative collaborators Marisa Brown and Trevor Matthews found themselves working together on a short film festival. The pair were absolutely sure that they could do better than some of the entries, and that it was time to pool their creative genius, stop criticising, and start creating their own filmic masterpiece.

However, they were soon to rue their arrogance. The project was plagued with dramas - key props were undelivered, schedules and crew went awry, hard drives exploded time and time again, the final footage was filled with sound and exposure issues, and there was a mystifying lack of cutaways. The project hit a brick wall. Marisa and Trevor returned to their daily lives with their tails well and truly between their legs, but often quietly dreaming of what could have been...

Time passed. Things changed. Technology advanced. Marisa started work on a new film and Trevor threatened to publicly beat her to death if this new venture was finished before 'Pisces'.

And so, with the renewed vigour that comes when one's life is at stake (accompanied by stalwart support from various technical geniuses), 'Pisces, Arise!' was dragged kicking and screaming into 2009. Perhaps, like the fried fish in this tale, the film would have been better off left for dead; lost, for all time, in a void of darkness.

But then again... who are we, as mere mortals, to decide what is right and what is against the will of Man and Nature?

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It Begins in the Third Person: The Origins of Excordis

It began in the summer holidays of 1998 - high school had finished forever, Trevor and Marisa had both been rejected from highly lucrative summer jobs at Safeway, and the weekend drama class they had attended for the last five years had been cancelled due to the 'extreme arrogance' of all the attendees. Eager to prove their ex-teacher wrong, the pair arrogantly set about writing, directing and producing their first full-length play under the guise of 'Excordis Theatre'. Surprisingly, it was a roaring success.

Many years of self-penned theatrical works followed, including several shows for the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Likened to 'a young D-Generation', by prominent members of the Melbourne arts scene, they were a creative team on the rise.

But suddenly, the real world intervened. People graduated from uni and got 'real' jobs (or realised they were never any good at acting anyway). Nobody had time for 'doing plays' any more. Trevor moved out of the toilet-cleaning game and became a rising star in the Arts Management world. Marisa started a band, moved overseas, moved home, got a record deal, was dumped by her band, and became some kind of film and video producer.

For many years, Excordis lay forgotten - until a fateful day in 2006, when the pair decided that the world had waited too long. It was time for another Excordis venture. But this time, it would be in the filmic, and not the theatrical world.

Perhaps it was their greatest move- or perhaps their greatest mistake. Only time will tell...