Riding a Flying Ship to Comic-Con: An Interview with Chris Kellett

It almost sounds like a movie script itself – one day, two university students are filming homemade lightsaber fights in the suburbs of Adelaide, and the next they're accepting a filmmaking award at Comic-Con in San Diego. It may not have been that quick a turnaround, but for writers Jeremy Kelly-Bakker and Jim Hogevonder and 25-year-old Adelaide-based writer/director Chris Kellett, the journey from experimenting with special effects software at Flinders University to having their short film shown at San Diego's famous pop culture convention was a momentous one. Aurora is a rollicking steampunk-inspired film about love, betrayal, slave traders and a flying ship; it took three years to make and over the next two years, interest gradually built up on YouTube before the film was accepted into Comic-Con. Sinead Stubbins spoke to Kellett about making films on a budget, sustaining enthusiasm for a project and encountering his pop culture heroes at Comic-Con 2013.

Additional keywords: secondary, young filmmaker