Chōra | An AuroraVision Anthology

Chōra | An AuroraVision Anthology is an ambitious speculative short film made up of five distinct storyworlds, all connected by Chōra, a strange membrane between realities where the memories, systems, and beliefs of many worlds overlap.

The anthology moves through five unique flavours of sci-fi: Momentum, a surreal journey of the consciousness after life; Second Genesis, a post-collapse mythology where a robot is worshipped as a god; God Complex, a story of future faith and artificial intelligence on an alien world; Octopod, a cyberpunk exploration of labour, debt, and automated control; and Cōherence, the connective Chōra story that threads the worlds together through the Observer and the Chorus Orb.

Together, these stories form one connected anthology film and a creative showcase for AuroraVision’s emerging filmmakers, artists, performers, designers, producers, and VFX collaborators in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. The project is about building bold, strange, artist-driven sci-fi worlds, and creating space for ambitious independent genre filmmaking in our local creative community.

AuroraVision is a Wellington-based creative collective focused on speculative storytelling. We bring a blend of practical craft & digital artistry to create bold, visual story-worlds.

Our core team is made up of emerging filmmakers, artists, writers, performers, producers, designers, and VFX artists who have come together to build something bigger than any one of us could make alone.

James Tweddle | Showrunner, Director, Writer
James Tweddle (he/they) is a Wellington-based filmmaker, visual storyteller, and co-founder of AuroraVision. He loves writing and building story-worlds and his work explores cosmic horror, memory and speculative futures.
James wrote, produced, and co-directed Temporal, a sci-fi short film selected for the 2025 Show Me Shorts Film Festival and awarded Best Student Short Film at NZ Web Fest. His background spans short films, music videos, VFX, production design, and digital media, with a strong focus on tactile artistry and worldbuilding.
For the AuroraVision Anthology, James is shaping the overarching world of Chōra, a liminal space between realities that connects the individual stories into one larger cinematic experience and guides the narratives across each project.

Manny Caballero | Series Co-Producer
Manny Caballero (any pronouns) is a Series Co-Producer for the AuroraVision Anthology, helping guide the logistics, scheduling, planning, and production structure required to make a multi-part anthology possible. Working closely with Esther Sushames and the Operations team, Manny helps turn the project from a collection of exciting ideas into an achievable production pipeline, ensuring the creative ambition is supported by clear organisation and practical execution. 

Esther Sushames | Series Co-Producer
Esther Sushames is a Series Co-Producer for the AuroraVision Anthology. She comes from an Engineering background which she is now applying to film producing by working across scope, feasibility, budgeting, documentation, and production planning. Alongside Manny Caballero, Esther shares responsibility for the organisational structure of the series, helping assess what each piece requires and how the wider anthology can be delivered within realistic resources. Her role is essential in grounding the project’s ambition, ensuring the creative vision is supported by clear budgets, achievable production plans, and practical documentation.

Weston Symes | Head of VFX, Writer
Weston Symes (he/him) is a VFX artist, animator, and co-founder whose work is central to the technical ambition of the anthology.
Weston co-directed and led the VFX on Temporal, a sci-fi short film selected for the 2025 Show Me Shorts Film Festival and awarded Best Student Short Film at NZ Web Fest. Weston also won the Best VFX Award at the NYFF in 2022 for his work on the ZAY - Mission Commence music video.

His work is especially important to his piece; Second Genesis, which is being developed as a fully animated 3D short set in a post-collapse Aotearoa where old technology has been reinterpreted into something mythological.

Charlie Jones | Multidisciplinary Artist, Actor
Charlie Jones (he/him) is a filmmaker, performer, and creative collaborator whose work spans performance, directing, music, and visual storytelling.
Charlie is the creative lead behind Momentum, the first short in the anthology. Momentum follows a man’s surreal descent through pain, memory, and identity after a fall transports him into a psychedelic post-mortal space.
As both a performer and director, Charlie brings a deeply physical and emotionally intuitive approach to the project, helping shape one of the anthology’s most expressive and movement-driven pieces.

Jeremy Brow | Writer, Operations

Jeremy Brow (he/him) comes from a background of stage performance and musical theatre. He contributes to the narrative backbone of the project, helping shape story development and the wider creative structure of the anthology. He’s also involved as a core member of the operations team, working closely with the producers and showrunner to get each part of the anthology off the ground and through its production cycle.
Jeremy is the writer behind God Complex, one of the key storyworlds in the anthology, which explores an intersection of faith, family and artificial intelligence.
Jeremy can be found on almost every AV film set, doing any and every job that needs to be done to complete a shoot - ranging from 2nd AC, to best boy grip, and quietly fixing a hundred tiny problems before they arise. 

Harrison Symes | Web Development, Writer

Harrison Symes is a writer, web designer, and digital collaborator. He built and maintains the AuroraVision website, shaping the public-facing home for the collective and its projects.

As a writer, Harrison is developing Octopod, another of the anthology’s key storyworlds, a cyberpunk future that explores labour, debt, and automated control.

Chōra | An AuroraVision Anthology is being produced independently by a passionate team working with limited resources, borrowed gear, personal equipment, favours, and a huge amount of volunteer labour. 

We have already started: Momentum and Second Genesis have been shot, and pre-production development is underway on the next pieces of the anthology. Our internal budget forecast gives us a clear baseline for the core production needs, but this funding campaign is designed to give the project proper breathing room beyond the bare minimum.

We are raising $10,000 to help us complete the next stage of the anthology and support the practical costs of making FIVE unique story worlds within one film.

Funding will support:

Production Design, Costumes and Props
A major part of this anthology is the physical artistry of each world. Funding will help us source materials, build props, create costumes, dress sets, and give each story world its own distinct visual identity through physical craft and artistry.

Cast, Crew and On-Set Support
We are working with a large group of collaborators across multiple shoot days. Funding will help us provide food, transport support, basic crew care, and where possible; koha or payment for key contributors.

Locations, Studio Time and Practical Production Costs
The anthology moves across different worlds and styles, which means different production needs. Funding will help cover location costs, studio access, set requirements, transport, and the practical expenses that come with making ambitious low-budget film work properly.

Gear Hire and Technical Resources
While much of the project is being made with personal and borrowed equipment, some scenes may require additional lenses, lighting, camera support, rigging, or specialist gear to achieve the look and scale we’re aiming for.

VFX, Animation and Post-Production
Several pieces in the anthology rely on VFX, green screen, 3D animation, compositing, sound design, colour, editing, and digital worldbuilding. Funding will help support the tools, time, and technical work needed to bring these worlds together.

Marketing, Distribution and Festival Costs
We want this project to reach people! Funding will also support trailers, posters, campaign materials, festival submissions, online release assets, and the wider marketing needed to share the finished film with an audience.

Contingency
With any project, unexpected costs are inevitable. A portion of the budget has been set aside to help us respond to practical needs as they arise without compromising the quality of the work.

Chōra | An AuroraVision Anthology is one short film made up of five distinct storyworlds, with each vignette into these storyworlds highlighting and pushing different aspects of the skillsets within the AuroraVision collective & in our wider collaborative filmmaking community in Te Whanagnui-a-Tara. Each world stands alone, but they are all connected by Chōra, the liminal membrane between universes.

Momentum
A man falls down a flight of stairs and is transported into a surreal, shifting realm of pain, memory, and identity. Momentum is a visual and physical journey through the body and mind, using movement, music, VFX, and dreamlike imagery to explore what pain feels like from the inside.

This is the first piece of the anthology and has already been shot as our proof of concept and is in our post-production pipeline.

Second Genesis
Set in a post-collapse Aotearoa, Second Genesis follows a robot who has come to be worshipped like a god by a community of human survivors. In a future where old technology has become myth and systems turn into ritual, offerings of techno-trash are brought to the machine, who slowly begins using them to build something new.

Second Genesis explores creation, belief, survival, and how people rebuild meaning from the ruins of the world before them. This is the second piece of the anthology which has also completed its first stage of production and is now being crafted into a fully realised 3D animation piece.

God Complex
Far in the future, stranded on a barren alien world, a family of techno-spiritual pilgrims huddle around a dying fire. As the cold sets in and their sacred text is burned page by page for warmth, faith, survival, and family loyalty begin to fracture.

God Complex explores faith, family dynamics, artificial intelligence, obedience, and the terrifying weight of systems that can be worshipped without ever truly caring.

Octopod
In a future where all power has been centralised to those who own the tools for automation, a man struggles to keep the plates of his life spinning. No longer able to afford the Artificial Intelligence to operate his 8 machine workers, he must manually take control of each of these machines, one at a time.

Octopod is a strange and grim exploration of labour, debt, control, and isolation.

Cōherence
Between each world of the anthology lies Chōra, a space between universes where each of the  touch. Within this cosmic membrane, we experience the story of Cōherence which follows The Observer, a human that has fallen into Chōra while searching for meaning, patterns, and any logic that could bind them together. Beside her is the Chorus Orb, an ancient and strange composite intelligence that offers answers, through coherence & surrender of self.

As the anthology unfolds, Chōra becomes the thread between each story world: a higher plane where the echoes of every universe & story converge, and where the search for meaning may lead to something far beyond The Observer's comprehension.

There is a huge amount of emerging creative talent in Wellington.

Filmmakers, artists, designers, performers, animators, VFX artists, writers, and producers who are ready to make ambitious work, but often lack the funding, structure, or opportunity to take that next step.

Chōra | An AuroraVision Anthology is our way of creating that opportunity ourselves.

Each short film becomes a chance to showcase a different skillset within the team. Each has a different key focus; VFX, 3D animation, production design, writing and performance. All excel at world building.

Together, they form a portfolio of what this collective can do.

Backing this campaign means supporting more than one short film!

You are helping us build a slate of stories.

You are helping emerging filmmakers gain experience on ambitious projects.

You are helping us create practical opportunities for emerging artists, performers, designers, VFX artists, and crew in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

You are helping us develop a sustainable creative pipeline for AuroraVision and the wider indie film community around us.

Most importantly, you are helping us prove that we do not need to wait for permission from funding bodies to make the kind of work we believe in!