Lachie Pezet

 A comedy about dirty pubs and beautiful mermaids....

Recently dumped Shane travels to a seaside town to experience a non-refundable romantic weekend for two. Hoping that the bargain price and the activities on offer may entice his ex-girlfriend to show up, he instead finds a group of drunks pining for a mythical mermaid.   The mens' tales of love and the sea intermingle with Shane’s own heartbreak and he finds himself drunk and intoxicated by the possibility of an aquatic one-night stand. 

Why Are We Making This Film?

The idea of a mermaid has been sweetened and sugar coated by years of childhood cartoons and bedtime stories, but the roots of the  myth are bound to a history of lonely sailors mistaking ugly seals for beautiful ladies. The absurdity and sadness of the myth inspired us to create a film about men and their fantasies. The world has changed and whale oil no longer lights the streets, but the potent masculine culture that created the image of the mermaid can still be felt today.

We are inspired by the dry, deadpan style of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki as well as the purple prose of Dylan Thomas' depictions of bars and pubs. Our visual style is influenced by the tactile and  textured filmmaking of Miguel Gomes as well as the fantastic use of in-camera techniques and shoddy prosthetics in the Round the Twist television series.

Meet The Team: 

Lachie Pezet (Director) is the largest and most robust fur seal. He has a large and broad head with a pointed snout that may be flat or upturned slightly and his whiskers (vibrissae) are long.

Native to Melbourne, Lachie is currently completing a Masters in Directing (Narrative) at the Victorian College of the Arts. His work has focused on how storytelling shapes our relationships, from traditional folklore to the daily chit-chat. 

Water on the Brain is the culmination of his attempt to blend elements of sea lore and mythology with questions around masculinity and identity.

Freeman Trebilcock (Producer) is well known for his ornate beauty, venomous spines, and unique tentacles. His conspicuous coloration with boldly contrasting stripes and wide fans of projecting spines advertises his ability to defend himself.

His juvenile years were spent upstream in regional Victoria, but after migrating to the city he turned his attention to filmmaking and completed a Masters in Documentary in 2016. His work at the Victorian College of the Arts explored multi-narrative storytelling and the function of self-reflexivity in documentary, culminating in Forging Ned Kelly, a 16 minute documentary that blended a modern tale of bureaucratic injustice with the history of the Kelly gang.  He is currently working as a producer on a Screen Australia funded feature film due for release in 2018.

Gabriel Hutchings (Cinematographer) is a large, edible marine gastropod in the family Buccinidae, the "true whelks". He emits a thin and copious slime and feeds on extracted bivalve remains abandoned by starfish. 

Gabriel can be found along the Yarra river where he is completing a Bachelor of Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts. He has shot music videos, short films as well as directing his own short films. Through his involvement in the Artist Film Workshop he has worked with a variety of film formats, shooting and developing his own super 8 and 16mm film stock as well as 35mm and medium format stills. Inspired by cinematographers such as Evan Prosofsky, Gabriel blends old and new techniques to explore visual storytelling.

We are committed to producing Water on the Brain with the smallest budget possible, utilising the resources we already have, and what we have access to at the film school.  However, there are always hard costs for any production and we are currently looking at a minimum budget of $6600:

Props, Set dressing & Art Department ($1200)

Costume, Makeup & mermaid tail ($800)

Fuel costs for cast & crew ($350)

Feeding the cast & crew for a week ($750)

Camera & Lens hire ($1000)

Sound Recordist with professional gear ($1500)

Location Permits and hires: ($450)

Music & Post-Production Sound ($550)

All these expenses are about lifting the overall quality of the final product, to deliver a film with excellent production value.  We feel like the film has a broad audience appeal and to ensure the story connects we need the right tools to bring it to the screen.

Producers Footnote: Numerous focus group studies have shown that mermaids have an immediate stimulating effect on the male brain.  By playing up and exploring the everyday fascination with this myth we are exploiting the audiences existing curiosity and tapping into a ready-made market.

As with any small budget student film, there are challenges and constraints for us to meet head on. Despite our small scale, we are spending each day figuring out how to make each element of this film stand out, utilising an innovative and time-saving editing style, exploring experimental in-camera visual effects and using improvisational techniques with our cast.  Our creativity is the main tool we will use to overcome the various challenges of production.  Our experience on projects of a similar scale means we are fully aware of the hurldes invovled in getting a film made and we are confident in our ability to kick them in the face.

If the story of a a pub full of drunks and their mermaid fantasy strikes a chord with you, come on board our filmmaking journey! 

Any support you can give would be hugely appreciated, and you'll be helping the next generation of Australian filmmakers as we experiment and focus on our unique sense of cinematic storytelling.   

Visit and Like our Facebook pageto follow our production and spread the tale of the mermaid!