Three young writers from a London School have won a University of Kent competition for a script inspired by migration in the Roman Empire.
Their prize is £100 worth of book tokens to share and the opportunity to have their script turned into an animated film.
Written by three Year 8 pupils from St Paul’s Way Trust School in Tower Hamlets, the script is about the recruitment of a soldier from Africa to the Roman army. Titled Adewalus from West Africa, it was judged to be ahead of all the other entries in its quality, imagination and humour.
The competition is run by the University’s Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies in its School of European Culture and Languages (SECL).
Ray Laurence, Professor of Roman History and Archaeology in SECL, launched the competition following the huge success of his animated film A Teenage Life in Ancient Rome, which has been viewed more than 5 million times on YouTube.
The winning script from the 2016 competition, A Day in the Life of a Roman Client, written by Kien Powell of Stowe School, Buckingham, has now been made into an animation.
This film was edited by Professor Laurence who arranged for it to be made by Malachi James, a BA student of Animation, London College of Communication. He created a different look, compared to the earlier films co-produced by Professor Laurence, drawing on the traditions of cartoons, such as those of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with a strong emphasis on drawing by hand.
As part of the project, Malachi was interviewed about his experience of working on the project by Aylish Wood, Professor of Animation and Film Studies in Kent’s School of Arts, who said he had a ‘deft use of humour, character design and timing of movement’.
The projects were funded by the University of Kent’s Public Engagement Fund and SECL.