Live From Men's Final Four: Duke's Digital Content Strategy Keeps Focus on Team's Title Aspirations in Coach K's Grand Finale Leaning into longform social video, Blue Devils further elevate content quality for the big stage By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Saturday, April 2, 2022 - 2:50 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
For college sports creatives, the stakes don't get much higher than the Final Four.
And then there's Duke in 2022.
The creative content team from Duke Athletics is surrounding the Blue Devils' trip to the 2022 Final Four will video and photography. From left: Director of Athletics Photography Reagan Lunn, Creative Director for Duke Men's Basketball David Bradley, Executive Director of Communications Mike DeGeorge, Blue Devil Network Senior Producer/Editor Nolan Elingburg, and Creative Content Producer for Duke Men's Basketball Stephen Ochoa. (Photo Courtesy of Nolan Elingburg)
Not only are the Blue Devils here in New Orleans to claim their first National Championship since 2015, they will look to do so in the final season of legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski's career and will need to go through their greatest rival to get there.
The gravity of the storylines are almost overwhelming.
So how does the content creation crew from both the Duke Men's Basketball program and the Duke Athletic Department's Blue Devil Network avoid getting crushed by the pressure of the occasion? For Duke Men's Basketball Creative Director David Bradley, it's all about blocking out the noise and not losing perspective of the task at hand.
The stage, the moment, the opportunity: that's bigger than a rivalry game, says Bradley. Whoever you're playing, that's bigger than a coach's last game. We've had our chance this year to celebrate and honor Coach. We've done different content throughout the year, whether it's simple dumps of the amazing Coach K photo archive, all the way to elaborate videos with collabs of extraordinary drone pilots and everywhere in between. You get to the tournament and that's a whole new time. Everything else, rivalry, Coach, all that is put aside.
As the Duke Men's Basketball team readies itself for Saturday night's epic showdown with the University of North Carolina, Duke Athletics has embedded a team of five content specialists to create and distribute content. The crew includes Bradley, Duke Men's Basketball Creative Content Producer Stephen Ochoa and Blue Devil Network Senior Producer/Editor Nolan Elingburg.
That includes following the team to various activities such as practices, media events, and other activations throughout the city, while also editing special projects like hype videos and shooting what they can come game time.
: This is all fun to us. We don t look at it really as pressure. We get to play in front of more people than anybody has. We get to play on the biggest stage in college sports We'll be ready. pic.twitter.com/u5YYkr4VJr
Duke Men's Basketball (@DukeMBB) April 2, 2022
As is the case at the Final Four each year, the creative teams at each of the participating universities face limiting rights restrictions around content shot of the live game. That has presented a notable challenge for the group, but one they are prepared to tackle as an overarching theme of their content year-round serves a longform approach that takes fans behind the scenes.
For example, content like the Duke Dub Cam where a shooter gets onto the court and captures the immediate reactions on the floor and in the locker room following a victory.
Job's not finished #DukeDubCam pic.twitter.com/ffBND1Xr6q
Duke Men's Basketball (@DukeMBB) March 25, 2022
We have to change the way we've done things for the whole season, for the biggest three weeks of the year, says Elingburg. We thought Duke Dub Cam' would be a good way to show the guys celebrating after wins and show their personality. That's a cool thing we've added.
It's hard to find the time too, as you keep winning, adds Bradley. We won this biggest game in the season. Well, the next game's now the biggest game and you only have a day or two and you've got to keep churning out the content. I think that format lend itself well to kind of throwing the archive from the whole experience out in a creative way.
Shooters are working largely with the Sony a7s III camera and using a mixture of lenses, including a 24-105mm and a 70-200mm. For shooting the game from the school's dedicated shooting position under the backboard, the team turns to the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K. With that device, Elingburg says, they are shooting in 4K and in slow motion. To accommodate the very large files that come with that, they are recording straight to SSD drives to handle and manage the media.
Duke Men's Basketball's social accounts have also leaned heavily into still photography, not simply because of the video rights restrictions but due to the quality imagery produced by the Director of Athletics Photography Reagan Lunn. The content team has also received a huge boost from Duke Athletics' Executive Director of Communications Mike DeGeorge.
That video shoot at the 4 has come a long way #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/i8xV9JHdRQ
Duke Men's Basketball (@DukeMBB) April 1, 2022
As the eyes of the sports world descend on Duke basketball and the Final Four this weekend, it's hard to not reflect on the dramatic season that was for the Duke Men's Basketball program. Content highlights have included another expertly crafted season of Duke Blue Planet (of which Bradley says there may be one more episode of following the Tournament depending on how the results on the court pan out) and a project that both Bradley and
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Live From Men's Final Four: Duke's Digital Content Strategy Keeps Focus on Team's Title Aspirations in Coach K's Grand Finale Leaning into longform social video, Blue Devils further elevate content quality for the big stage By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
