PNW won four awards at the 2017 Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts. The largest award was the Best of Festival for Student Scriptwriting, an honor PNW has never received prior to this year.

The Best of Festival for Student Scriptwriting award was given to Jessica Cannell, Adrian Benton, Julio Casares, Lauren Edmond and Bianca Martinez for a TV speculative screenplay script written for the science fiction series “Humans.” This is the top award a university can win in the category. The script takes place after the season one finale as an opening for the second season.

Mary Beth O’Connor, associate professor of Communication who teaches the scriptwriting class that enters the competition every year, said the win was a shock.

“I don’t know if there’s words,” O’Connor said. “I think in my entire career, I’ve never been so proud. For students in their first year of scriptwriting, it’s incredible.”

O’Connor said the award is impressive considering the students were competing against universities across the country, many with entire programs dedicated to scriptwriting whereas PNW only offers one course.

Cannell, senior communication major, was the main contributor to the script that won. She said she did not realize the gravity of the award initially.

“I didn’t realize two things: that we have never won this award before but also that spec scripts rarely ever win. It’s always originals that take it because with spec scripts, you didn’t come up with the idea of the show. You just write the next episode,” Cannell said.

The script submitted by the students is about two families, one that is human and one that is made of anthropomorphic robots called synths. The script’s focus is discovering the limits of how well people know each other. The inspiration came from Cannell’s personal experience with her father’s family after he died. Cannell said this award has inspired her to pursue a writing career professionally in Los Angeles after graduation.

“I look at the script and I think, ‘This is a real piece of art.’ It’s about making something that lets people see your perspectives,” Cannell said.

PNW has a continuous track of winning awards at the BEA competition, something the Communication & Creative Arts department is known for in the university. O’Connor said that in the last four years, PNW has won the top amount of awards. O’Connor said the work the students put into the scripts is what makes them deserving of the awards, as it can be anywhere from 25 to 60 hours per week.

Andrew Morris, graduate communication student, took third place in the short subject category, the same category he placed first in last year. His script is about a man who attends a funeral for his virginity. His inspiration came from the feeling he had when looking at old photos.

“You look at these photos of yourself from a few years ago, and you feel the difference. There’s this feeling of loss or death from moments passed. Life is full of these grieving losses before you die that are internal and not traditional,” Morris said. “I wanted to present this to show one of these experiences physically, and that’s a momentous one in people’s eyes, an adolescent one.”

Morris said that the scriptwriting class was one of the best experiences of his life.

“I learned more from that one class than I learned from any others, just about life. When a course transcends the classroom, that’s when you’re really learning,” Morris said.

PNW also took both first and second place in the TV speculative category for scripts written as the first episode of season two of the Netflix show “Stranger Things.” The first place winners were Elizabeth Carey, Janel Contreras, Vanessa Matthews and James Mullaney. The second place winners were RoLonda Crawford, Jacob MacDonald, Hardy Willis, Raquel Witherow and Joe R. Zuniga III.

O’Connor said that out of that semester, 18 students in four groups submitted scripts and 14 students won. The students from the class had the option to register their scripts with the Writer’s Guild West for copyright privileges or with the Library of Congress.

The students will accept their awards during the ceremony taking place on April 22 and 23 in Las Vegas while also attending the weekend convention.