Triple win for MDX short films at RTS London Student TV awards

Lecturers hail inventiveness and dedication of 2024 graduate winners

Three MDX student films have won prestigious RTS Student TV Awards for the London region, after the University garnered seven nominations across six categories.

Anomaly, directed by Arturs Voblikovs and shown above, was named Best Animation, while A Bigger Bear (written by Isaac Morgans) took the Writing prize and Midknight Crisis (art director and production designer Dafne Sanchez) received the award for Design at a ceremony held at the world’s premier magic society, The Magic Circle, earlier this month.

Arturs developed his fascination with animation attending government-funded arts clubs while he was growing up in Riga. He also made stop motion animations at home with his medical doctor father, using a tiny webcam. He watched endless cartoons - Spongebob was a favourite because, Arturs says, of its great design and knack for telling "short, simple stories in an interesting way".

He chose MDX partly because of its specialism in stop motion, the technique he favours. Another attraction was the opportunity to do a study exchange: he spent a term in South Korea, where he made his 'first big film,' Migration, the story of a red bird flying to warmer climes. It was finalist at three international film festivals and won a Best Editing prize in Madrid.

The concept for Anomaly came from Arturs wanting to make a film reflecting the 'average Latvian village,' with wooden buildings and people enjoying bike rides, the beach, and mushroom-picking in the forest. There is a close neighbourliness to life in the Latvian countryside, where many city-dwellers decamp for the entire summer, and he “imagined what it would be like to make it even smaller" in model form, he says. In the year of Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis winning an Oscar, Arturs hopes to boost awareness and representation of where he grew up on Western screens.

Arturs (pictured above) took two or three months to make the film, painstakingly building the miniature set on his own. But it was also a collaborative effort. Knowing he wanted accordion music, Arturs happened across talented accordion player Alise Silina, a Royal Academy of Music student, at a concert at London Latvian House. In turn Alise brought in young US composer Eric Davis, and between them they produced the soundtrack.

Relatives, family friends and Arthur's old animation teacher and her family recorded voiceovers. Arturs joined forces with peers from the MDX Film course Alfie Savage and Jack Burgess, and was assisted by second year Animation students Dunja Zlatanovic and Janis Frostmanis.

Arturs, who took on roles as a course ambassador for Animation, student ambassador and senior resident assistant while at MDX, credits the university for the support and opportunities it gave him. He praises the range and quality of equipment for hire from the Kit Hub and says it counted as a big deal to be able to book studio space for three months to make Anomaly.

The two BAFTAs won by BA Animation joint course leader Jonathan Hodgson were a major reason to apply to MDX, he says. He greatly valued the advice of industry practitioner-lecturers Steve May and Chris Shepherd, while Animation History & Theory lecturer Sam Summers helped with details such as precise words for translations.

Arturs notes his coursemates’ passion for the artform, with MDX students making up a good proportion of the audience at London International Animation Festival events. “MDX people care about animation," he says. "It seems like MDX is taking animation more seriously than most other unis."

Isaac Morgan’s A Bigger Bear, about two young brothers’ arduous road trip to Stonehenge, overlays family drama with joy and humour. It was inspired by Isaac’s relationship with his own brother, but also by his experience working for a children’s charity during the pandemic where one young boy had suffered the loss of a sibling.

“I try not to bash people over the head with crying scenes,” Isaac says about the film. The story went through a long development from an original idea about brothers on a quest to find England’s best fish and chip shop.

“It was interesting because of how much I threw away,” Isaac says. “I wrote the first five pages, read them back and threw them all away, I never looked at them again. Then I wrote the entire script of 17 pages. Then I threw the first 6-7 pages away.

“In the original story, the start of the journey was the start of the film. Now the start of the film is two-thirds of the way into the journey and the car has broken down”.

Script-writing is one of the elements of filmmaking that Isaac enjoys most. He originally thought he might do music after sixth form studies at Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, but opted for film after doing lots of video editing in his children’s charity role.

He watched students’ final year project films on university websites when he was trying to decide on courses and it was Middlesex’s that stood out, he says.

He valued the hands-on practical focus of the Middlesex film programme. Weekly scriptwriting workshops at Middlesex facilitated by David Heinemann, where attendees would read and critique each other’s scripts, were “hugely beneficial” to the writing process.

The RTS award came as a complete surprise,.

“I often think I'm flying blind. I was trying to write something true and honest. The fact something written in that spirit has recognition, that's a big thing for me."

Isaac Morgan, student

Dafne Sanchez feels lucky, she says, to have had a whole summer to think about the production design for Tyler Willison’s Midknight Crisis, after Tyler’s script was deemed too ambitious for a second year movie when he originally wrote it. The film contains two completely different visual worlds – the spaceship set of a hammy, Doctor Who-style sci-fi flop, and a realistic backdrop to a kidnap plot set in London in the recent past.

Dafne started with the part she anticipated would be most difficult, the spaceship cockpit. With Art Direction and Production Design Technical Tutor Andrew Pomphrey, she first made an inventory of what resources were available at MDX in terms of flats and other scenery.

She experimented on digital spaces using visualisation software Vectorworks and Twinmotion to test what angles and shots would work.

Andrew introduced her to carpentry technician Kris Watson from MDX’s Theatre department who “helped so much – he brought a lot of magic out of the set”, Dafne says – for instance, designing the rig for a sliding door which the aliens come through.

Dafne scoured Hendon for items to re-use. Mark Midknight’s pilot’s seat came from a barbershop near the station. The wall fittings were spray-painted pipes and toilet pieces supplied by Tyler Willison’s plumber dad. With her thrifty approach, Dafne brought the production design budget down from £600-700 to £400.

For the gangster plot, the safest location for the actors to discharge a gun turned out to be a corner of the MDX campus. Dafne transformed the area by masking walls with large vinyl stickers covered with graffiti and by dumping all the rubbish she could find across campus on the site, so that Middlesex students watching the screening couldn’t recognise where it was shot.

Growing up in Miami, Dafne was highly influenced by British artists and jumped at the chance of studying in the UK. She chose MDX for how the Film programme meshed together the practical and theoretical, and once she had started, relished trying a bit of everything. “You have the opportunity to understand film as a whole piece: what parts are you, what parts you can contribute to,” she says.

Prior to Midknight Crisis she had worked with much the same team on a film set in a pub called Well Done. Other course highlights included working on a horror short called Tremolo (“a fun genre to explore when you don’t have much budget”), and researching Midknight Crisis in the Space gallery of the Science Museum.

Senior Lecturer David Heinemann who supported the Midknight Crisis production team “was incredible,” Dafne says. “He made a very intimidating project and process feel a bit closer. After a drop-out from the cast, he even stepped in to play an alien and “gave the most hilarious performance ever."

Technical tutor Andrew Pomphrey calls Midknight Crisis “ambitious and visually inventive. The contrasting nostalgia of classic sci-fi kitsch and the drama of “real life” is handled with care, supported by strong costume, makeup, and detailed graphic design.

“Dafne and her team made excellent use of all the support and facilities at Middlesex to create this high-quality film on a tiny budget. I look forward to seeing where Dafne’s big personality and professionalism take her next."

David Heinemann says Isaac Morgans “is a talented and dedicated writer who spent months and months developing the script for A Bigger Bear. He workshopped the script in class on numerous occasions, sometimes with table readings, at other times by staging scenes.

“He was open-minded when receiving feedback, always acting on it thoughtfully and with the sole aim of make the script the best it could be. Throughout the process he remained focused on conveying the theme of the story, and had a deep and intuitive understanding of his characters”.

Sam Summers says that Arturs Voblikovs executes the 3D plasticine animation in Anomaly “with a professional - alongside an anarchic - comic sensibility. The short is a satirical mockumentary which celebrates and gently pokes fun at village life in Latvia, while also casting a spotlight on the country’s issues with alcoholism. Arturs deftly walks the tightrope between comedy and melancholy in a way only animation can achieve.

“The film was produced with funding from the Phil Davies Award, an annual grant donated to outstanding Middlesex Animation students by the producer of Peppa Pig. Its soundtrack was produced in collaboration with Fonic, a top London sound studio with which our course has close ties”.

Steve May adds that Arturs’s work at Middlesex “was always striking and original - demonstrating a great understanding of comic timing. We look forward to sharing more successes from our extremely talented student cohort in future”.

The three Middlesex award winners will now advance to the National RTS Student TV awards, the ceremony for which will be held later in the year.

Find out more about studying Film at Middlesex University.