4:26 p.m., Sept. 11, 2008----UD alum Vanessa Serrao, AG '98, will walk the Emmy Awards red carpet this weekend before the 2008 Creative Arts Emmy Awards are broadcast live at 8 p.m. EDT, Saturday, Sept. 13, on the E! cable channel from Los Angeles.

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Serrao and co-producer, Will Johnson, have been nominated for an Emmy for “Deadliest Catch: The Real Dutch” in the Outstanding Special Class--Short-format Nonfiction Category. The series of videos was produced for Discovery Digital Media for broadcast on Discovery.com, Video on Demand and Discovery Mobile.

Serrao directed and edited the particular episode--“Deadliest Catch: The Real Dutch”--that was nominated. Click here to view the video.

“The series profiled the town of Unalaska/Dutch Harbor on the Aleutian Islands, where the ships from the series the Deadliest Catch port. We wanted to show what the town is really like and feature the people who live there,” Serrao said.

After graduating from UD in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in entomology, with a concentration in wildlife conservation, Serrao went on to pursue her master of fine arts degree from Montana State University in Bozeman in science and natural history filmmaking.

“I always knew that I wanted to focus on the communications and education angles of wildlife and when I found the grad program in Montana, I thought it sounded like an amazing thing to do,” Serrao said.

While in graduate school, Serrao took advantage of an internship program at Discovery Health Channel. She worked on a show called Birth Day Live, where she assisted with “everything from in-house production to broadcasting live from hospital delivery rooms.”

After the internship at Discovery Health, Serrao did some freelance work for production companies on science education videos. That job led to an opportunity at the Science Channel and then a freelance position for an Animal Planet series called Ms. Adventure.

Based in Silver Spring, Md., where Discovery Communications is headquartered, Serrao works in the digital media department with a production group that does all of the "short-form" videos. Serrao said that her work appears online, on demand and on video mobile “using a lot of original footage and content that you won't see on the TV series itself.”

“I'm just happy to be nominated. But now that it's getting closer, I really want to win,” Serrao said. She chuckled, adding, “Wish me luck. I'm up against Jay Leno and the History Channel.”

Article by Katy O'Connell, AG '00
Photos by Will Johnson