9/ll Video on NABE, AUBER Members Wins Emmy

When then-high school junior Shari Drury, daughter of NABE member Michael Drury, began to plan how she would script and film her documentary, she never dreamed it would earn her a national student Emmy award.   It was NABE and AUBER members’ stories of escaping the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, that drew her to the project with the goal of “making something positive” of the harrowing experience.

Chosen out of 600 entries from high school broadcast journalists across the United States, Shari’s 20-minute documentary was one of seven honored with a National Television Academy Award for Student Excellence at a May 1st ceremony in New York City. Her award was for the writing for her documentary “September 11th, 2001: the Story of NABE and AUBER.”

Av Westin, executive director of the Foundation of the National Academy of Television Arts & Science, told the Commercial Appeal in Germantown, Tenn., that Shari’s documentary “stands out particularly because of its sensitivity.”   He said the video received the foundation's maximum score in all three judgment areas of content, creativity, and execution.

As events unfolded on 9/ll, Shari, then a seventh grader, was reminded by a friend at school that her father was attending a meeting in the Marriott that stood between Manhattan’s World Trade Center towers.   Shari joined her mother and siblings at home in a Memphis suburb to await word from Michael that he had escaped the collapse of the towers and was returning home, as did all members of NABE and the Association for University Business and Economic Research (AUBER).

Looking Back Five Years Later

Early in 2006, during her junior year at Germantown High School, Shari decided that she wanted to find out how NABE and AUBER members felt about their experiences five years later.  During her sophomore year she became involved in the school’s production team that has its own television studio.  “It’s a state of the art digital cable television studio that is student run and operated,” she said. 

“When my father learned of this, he and I crafted the idea to make a small documentary about September 11th and how he was there that day along with all the members of NABE and AUBER.  I began writing small drafts for scripts and making lists of footage I would need from 9/11 as well as of New York City in general. The ideas and lists continued to grow until I finally had an opportunity to really move on the project,” she wrote for NABE News.  She joined her father for NABE’s Washington Policy Conference in March of 2006, and began to interview members.

“Throughout most of my summer vacation, I logged interviews, collected sound-bytes, and basically taught myself to edit on Final Cut Pro. I had never before worked on editing or even tried to be a videographer, and there I was in one of the viewing rooms of my high-school's studio, creating a documentary,” she wrote. “Some would think the editing would be the hardest, but for me it was the script. I wanted to capture all the emotion of that day and leave no member's interview out. This documentary was for my father and his co-workers, and so I wanted to include everything I could to make it the best project for them.”  In all, she interviewed 15 members and used footage from seven or eight interviews in the final version.

Shari asked NABE and AUBER members to reflect on a series of issues from the perspective of five years after their 9/ll experiences.  “I asked them how they felt about traveling, about family connections, and national security,” she said.

Was she surprised about what she found?   “I was surprised that given something as strong as the 9/ll experience, many of them talked comfortably. But their memories were still strong,” she said in a phone interview.  Many members told Shari that talking about their experiences, even five years later, helped them cope.

Award Entry Began With Regional Competition

“I finished the project during the week of September 11th, 2006, the fifth-year anniversary. At the time, I did not have even an inkling of an idea that I would submit this to the Regional Student Excellence Awards for Television,” Shari wrote.  As the deadline approached for submitting entries for the Student Emmys, her father encouraged her to enter her video and the script. 

Shari and Michael thanked NABE and AUBER members who agreed to be interviewed and who helped in the production of the prize-winning documentary.   “I am also very appreciative to Germantown High School’s television and theatre program. Without their facilities and intuitive teachers, I would never have been able to learn the skills needed to complete the documentary,” Shari added.

This coming fall, Shari will attend the University of Memphis. Then come spring 2008, she will start working on a degree in broadcast journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles. “Broadcast journalism grabbed me in my junior year.  I love reporting and I love writing.  But I never thought I would win a national award,” she said.

Copies of the 9/ll documentary can be obtained by contacting Shari Drury via email at rehdrury@gmail.com or telephone at (901) 871-9589. She will be making copies throughout this summer and can mail them directly.