East Hanover Filmmaker Wins Grand Prize For Internet Safety Video

EAST HANOVER, N.J. – Stephen Ko knows the Internet runs the world. But he also knows it is each individual person’s contributions that runs the Internet.

With that in mind, the aspiring filmmaker from East Hanover put together a two-minute video and submitted it to the Trend Micro’s Internet Safety for Kids and Families video contest.

The fruits of his labor netted him the grand prize of $10,000 in the individual category.

Ko is a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry who says in the video that when he first began “contributing” to the Internet, he was met with plenty of negative feedback, but used the positive comments to fuel his desire to make better videos.

The video is titled “Who Will You Be?” and asks how one person can make the Internet a great place for everyone.

“When I first started, my videos were pretty low quality and frankly not that good, so I got plenty of comments telling me to just stop or get a life,” Ko said. “As I started getting better, my comments starting becoming more positive, although there would always still be the occasional troll. It used to bother me a lot whenever I got negative comments on my video, but now I just ignore or delete them. It’s the encouraging comments that really matter to me, which motivate me to get better at making videos.”

See the full video by clicking here.