COM Students’ Film Snags Them TV Jobs, Cash

Team members Christina Beiene (COM’17) (from left), Brittney Badduke (COM’17), and Kaley Roberts (COM’17) will be NESN’s newest interns come fall. Photo by Jackie Riccardi

A trio of College of Communication students recently won first place in NESN’s new reality show, NESN Next Producer, with their film On the Mic: The Connor Lenahan Story. Not only did the win net them a cash prize of $20,000, but internships this fall with the cable sports network.

“I was in shock, just really happy,” says Christina Beiene (COM’17), who was among the 10 finalists, with teammates Brittney Badduke (COM’17) and Kaley Roberts (COM’17), appearing on the seven-episode series. “I didn’t think all of this would happen from a contest we decided to do for fun a year ago.”

Lenahan (COM’17), who is familiar to Terrier fans as the announcer at men’s and women’s basketball games, has a rare and incurable congenital bone disease called osteogenesis imperfecta that causes weak bones that break easily, forcing him to spend most of his time in a wheelchair to safeguard against falling and injury.

“We wanted to profile Connor because he is all over BU,” says Roberts. “Everyone knows him. But we wanted to take a different angle and not make his osteogenesis imperfecta the focus of our story.” Badduke says she was drawn to Lenahan’s story because it wasn’t a conventional athlete profile, but focused instead on someone who couldn’t participate in sports in a traditional way, but became involved as an announcer.

The NESN series, which started airing this past spring, provided a behind-the-scenes look at New England college filmmakers creating short sports films. Two films were shown during each episode, with backstories about the student filmmakers and reviews of their work by Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr. Judging the entries were Tom Werner, chairman of the Red Sox, and Brad Falchuk, cocreator and executive producer of Glee and American Horror Story. The On the Mic episode aired on Marathon Monday in April.

The BU teammates had to submit their story pitch to NESN by last October to be considered for the show. They sent in a short video trailer, and once they knew they’d earned a spot, began interviewing Lenahan, BU Athletics staff, and members of the men’s basketball team in earnest, augmenting the interviews with footage of Lenahan navigating campus in his wheelchair and announcing at games. Despite an early start, Roberts says, the December 31 deadline snuck up on them—they submitted their finished piece just hours before it was due.

Badduke says the experience gave her an appreciation for how much work goes into producing a narrative documentary and how much advance planning is required before shooting can even begin. Beiene recalls the filming and editing process as one of trial and error, and says the biggest challenge was narrowing down four hours of raw footage into a coherent six-minute film. Happily, their subject—Lenahan—loved the finished film and said the women had “worked their asses off” to complete it.

In a twist, Werner and Falchuk announced during the season finale that the network was also offering an internship to runner-up Kieran McGirl, a Sacred Heart University student. “We decided to change the rules because everyone was really good and really exceptional, and we would hire all of you,” Falchuk told the finalists.

The three BU filmmakers plan to use their winnings to help finance study abroad trips next spring. In the meantime, each will begin a semester-long paid internship at NESN this fall.

In the video above, watch On the Mic: The Connor Lenahan Story, which won first place in the new reality show NESN Next Producer.