And the winners of the 2009 Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award are…
Story by Carl Kurek of The Purdue Chronicle
The awards are a highly competitive regional event recognizing outstanding achievements in categories such as broadcast journalism, directing, scriptwriting and documentary production.
Guerrero said “Plight of the Peregrines” is a short documentary film about PUC’s 2006 to 2007 men’s basketball team. During the season, academic ineligibility forced the Peregrines to forfeit all eight of their wins and cancel the remainder of their season.
The film documents what the team and university had to do to come back from the whole ordeal.
Guerrero was the group’s director, writer and co-producer. Malec was the assistant director and co-producer and Wielosinski was the actor and editor of the film.
Guerrero said filming took about a week, while writing, producing and finishing the film took about another month.
“Plight of the Peregrines” was produced for their Advanced Television Production class. The students later sent the film to the judges, where it became a nominee in the sports category for College Student Production.
During the awards show, the students competed against region universities such as Northwestern, DePaul, Columbia College, Northern Illinois and Valparaiso. These universities are perennial nominees at the awards ceremony, so PUC was truly an underdog.
“When they announced all the nominees, everyone cheered for each of them,” Guerrero said. “Then when they announced us, only like three people cheered.”
Guerrero said it was great to represent PUC and to be announced the winners and to be on stage in the presence of all the great journalists and other peers in attendance.
“The fact that we entered and won is such a good feeling. It’s like we know we are in the right field and really doing what we were meant to do,” Guerrero said.
“To support our students, I attended the event and was quite pleased to see them on the stage receiving their award,” Professor and Head Director of the Center for Global Studies at PUC Yahya Kamalipour said.
Guerrero also said students who want to get into production should continuously push their work, especially the limit on the quality of their work.
“These kind of recognitions speak volume to the quality of our students, faculty and instruction in the Department of Communication and Creative Arts,” Kamalipour said.
Both Guerrero and Kamalipour wanted to commend Professor Mary Beth O’Connor and radio-TV production and studio manager Craig Blohm, and express their gratitude for all that they do for the academic and professional success of students.
Guerrero, Malec and Wielosinski plan to enter the film in more competitions such as the College TV Awards, Student Academy Awards and the BEA Festival of Media Arts.
