By Rebecca Keister
PBN Staff Writer

Successful networking and the perfection of a specific skill set are two business essentials that are commonly celebrated as keys to success.

Peter Bredemeier, owner of Bunkr Video Productions Inc., can feel free to raise a glass and toast himself.

“I thought initially that if I want to make movies, I’ll be a director – and that’s what everyone thinks. Then I realized that there’s so many facets to making video and films,” Bredemeier said. “Now that I am working for myself, I really do enjoy it and try to take a lot of pride in the work that I do for people.”

That work, achieved after turning hopes of filmmaking into a video-editing business, recently earned the 37-year-old Rehoboth native an Emmy for his producer contributions on Jack Hanna’s “Into the Wild.” The latter is a nationally syndicated children’s show that centers on a young boy and his family’s adventures searching for wildlife destinations.

The show was named Outstanding Children’s Series at the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences 39th annual Daytime Entertainment Creative Arts Emmy Awards, held on June 17 in Los Angeles.

Though Bredemeier was actually out of the country that day – on vacation with his wife visiting her relatives in Sweden – it was a rarity in a career that has been filled with impeccable timing.

After graduating from St. Raphael Academy in Pawtucket in the mid-1990s, Bredemeier more or less humored his parents by enrolling in Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., with plans to study engineering.

It was a quick stay and he soon transferred to McGill University in Montreal. He earned a bachelor’s degree in cultural studies – the subject equivalent, he said, of film and communications – from there in 1998.

He then moved to Los Angeles to pursue his Hollywood dreams.

“[Film work] is a chance to do a job that’s the ultimate creative, modern art form,” he said. “It was what I wanted to do for years. You maybe think [in that field] you won’t be able to get a job but I felt strongly enough that it was worth it for me.”

He set his sights to making what became the film “Local Talent,” for which he returned to Massachusetts to shoot in 2000, while doing some temp and managerial work at Sony Pictures Entertainment.