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Three students from С����Ƶ’s chapter of the National Broadcasting Society (NBS) recently received first place awards at the NBS’s Region 1 Conference, securing spots as finalists in the national competition next spring in Dallas. 

The students, all Communication majors with specializations in Radio and Television, were senior Nikolas Paleologus, senior Alexander Corini and junior Gina Grosso. The regional awards ceremony was held on Saturday, November 7, at Millersville University. Rider’s chapter competed with universities and colleges from Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Rhode Island.

Paleologus received the “Best Movie Trailer” award for his short romantic comedy, With A Little Help, about a man dumped by his fiancée just days before the wedding. Last year, he started writing the script, which he intended to use for a film project as part of the production course taught by Professor Shawn Kildea, assistant professor of Communication. When Paleologus learned that the assignment from previous years had changed, he decided to work on the film as a personal project.

“It’s the longest production that I have ever tackled myself,” he said about the 35-minute film.

In total, there are 25 scenes and 17 cast members. Filming took place in various locations, including his hometown of Edgewater Park, N.J., the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Jim’s Steaks in Philadelphia, and Veterans Park in Hamilton. The film opens with aerial scenes of New York City, which Paleologus and Grosso captured via helicopter tour. He also filmed the last scene of the movie from a crane on Rider’s Lawrenceville campus.

Paleologus recently finished the entire film and plans to resubmit it as his entry to the national competition. Currently, he is interning with Center City Film & Video, a film and video production company, which does work for various stations including A&E and PBS KIDS Sprout.

Corini and Grosso received the “Best Instructional/Industrial Production Video” award. For the project, they created a promotional video for the Sayreville Conservation Corps., a 400-acre preserve maintained by Sayreville Township high school students under the direction of former councilman Stanley Drwal.

The two students learned about the promotional opportunity through Megan Zakrzewski, a senior Journalism major who works as a master sergeant at the preserve. During two days in August, Corini and Grosso filmed footage of the preserve and 10 different interviews with students and administrators. Corini and Gross shot about an hour and half of footage which they cut into about four minutes and 20 seconds.

“I took everything that I learned the last four years and applied it to the video,” said Corini, who has worked in С����Ƶ Network (RUN) studio since he was a freshman.

As an upperclassman in the RUN studio, Corini trains new lab assistants, produces news packages for different shows and builds sets. Corini is also involved in numerous filming and production opportunities outside of the studio. He has filmed children’s videos for Meet Me at the Corner, a company owned by Donna Winnett Guthrie ’68. He is also a sound engineer for Big Noize, a company that organizes band performances. Both Corini and Grosso will assist the crew of New York Top-40 radio station Z100 at this year’s Jingle Ball.

Since last year, Grosso has filmed a number of interviews and live performances for Z100, where she has worked closely with producer Garrett Vogel ’06. Recently, Grosso filmed a live performance of the band Honor Society for the station. She won the NBS “Best Live Performance Video Segment” award for the footage.

 “It was a lot of fun working with the band. The band was great because they were very aware of the camera,” she said. “While filming the performance, I had to be creative and move around in order to get different angles and close-ups of the five band members.”

In addition to her work at the radio station, Grosso is also working with Kildea and some students on Children of Terror, a documentary about a two Holocaust survivors – a German Jewish woman and a Polish Catholic woman. The project has involved many trips to New York, where the women live, and to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The documentary plans to focus on anti-Semitism and interfaith. Grosso is also working on an episodic documentary about the careers of Rider alumni for the RUN studio. Next semester, Grosso will intern at A&E and Outpost Digital, a production company.