Graduate College

WMU Graduate Standard - Kevin Grazioli

WMU Graduate Standard: Student Spotlight

Kevin Grazioli—Winner of Two EMMY awards!

Kevin Grazioli, MBA student at Western Michigan University, has two beautiful golden statues to commemorate his undergraduate film career. His film “Seeing Stars in Indiana” won two EMMY awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2012. Completed while he was a senior at Ball State University majoring in telecommunications, the film has been airing on Public Broadcasting System stations across Indiana since 2011.

Kevin Grazioli is shown standing outside with an Emmy Statue in each hand. Kevin is clean shaven, has short brown hair and an engaging smile. The Emmy statues are gold and look to be female angelic figures with wings spread high behind them while holding a wire frame globe up into the air above them.

In “Seeing Stars in Indiana,” Grazioli’s film crew followed professional and amateur astronomers as they traveled through Indiana and to Arizona to explore the night sky.

The film, which was created to, in Grazioli’s words, encourage people to “look up!” was nominated by PBS station WIPB-PBS, which funded the work. It won the overall prize for Health/Science Program or Special. Grazioli also won an EMMY for his role as Director—Post Production. In pre-production, Grazioli proposed the idea, obtained funding, and hired the crew, including narrators for the voice-overs and film editors. In post-production he hired the film editors and consulted with them as they edited the work on its journey to completion. Grazioli has made contacts in Los Angeles while working on the film and this worked to his advantage in hiring his crew.

Since it has come out, the film has been a stepping stone for Grazioli as he has worked on commercials for Wal-Mart as well as on Fox Sports and ESPN. Acting as producer, writer and director, as well as cinematographer, has given him great experience in his future career. Grazioli, who is from Canton, Michigan, is in his first year in the Master’s of Business Administration program at Western Michigan University. He works on campus as a Graduate Residence Hall Director at Ackley-Schilling. He has been working on a film project with Sindecuse Health Center and wants to pursue the financial and accounting side of filmmaking. For more information please visit his website at www.kevingrazioli.com.