Rider University Student Gina Grosso Achieves Top Honors

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National Broadcasting Society Awards recipients

LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ (12/04/2009)(readMedia)-- Gina Grosso of Newton, N.J., a junior Communication major, was one of three students from Rider University's chapter of the National Broadcasting Society (NBS) to receive a first place award at the NBS's Region 1 Conference, securing a spot as a finalist in the national competition next spring in Dallas.

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. The other Rider students included Alexander Corini of East Brunswick, N.J., a senior Communication major, and Nikolas Paleologus of Edgewater Park, N.J., a senior Communication major.

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.

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

"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."

Grosso is also working with Professor Shawn Kildea, assistant professor of Communication, 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 in Manhattan, N.Y.

Photo caption - From left to right: Alexander Corini of East Brunswick, N.J., a senior Communication major, Gina Grosso of Newton, N.J., a junior Communication major, and and Nikolas Paleologus of Edgewater Park, N.J., a senior Communication major.

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