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Duke Athletics, Arts and University Communications Videos Sweep Up Emmy Nominations

The red carpet lies ahead for several Duke staffers in athletics, communications and arts as they received Emmy nominations for outstanding video and broadcast work from the Midsouth Regional Emmy Chapter Monday night.

The videos will be competing against regional television stations, local governments and health care institutions, universities and other non-profits organizations creating film and video content for broadcast.

The winners will be announced in February.

 

Duke Athletics

The Duke men's basketball creative content team has been nominated for a pair of Emmy Awards. The nominations represent the first two for the Blue Devils' creative team of David Bradley, Nolan Elingburg and Stephen Ochoa.

In the category of Sports Story/News Feature, Duke's video on the Jones Family was nominated. Of the six nominees in that category, five are from news organizations with Duke's entry as the lone from a team or college.

The Jones video was produced by Elingburg and detailed former Duke guards Tre and Tyus Jones and their mother, Debbie, in her battle with breast cancer.

In the category of Post-Produced Sports Program, the Blue Devils' popular Duke Blue Planet series earned a nomination. Duke Blue Planet has twice won a Sports Video Group (SVG) Award for Outstanding Program Series in College Athletics.

The show, which has been edited and produced the last two seasons by Ochoa, has averaged nearly 2.7 million views annually and totaled one million hours of watch time across the Duke men's basketball social accounts.

 

University Communications

The university’s 2020 holiday video, called “Merry and Bright,” was nominated in the category of Program Promotion. Filmed when most members of the Duke community worked and studied remotely, the holiday video presented a bright reminder of the campus beauty during the holiday season and ended with a message of thankfulness for the work of the community during the pandemic. (See video above)

Produced by Blyth Morrell, assistant vice president of digital and brand strategy, it was filmed by the digital and brand team in University Communications.

Morrell and Julie Schoonmaker, assistant director for multimedia and production, were also nominated in the category of Branded Content for the virtual production of Founders Day 2020. Unable to hold the traditional in-person event during the pandemic, the digital and brand strategy team produced a four-minute video honoring the university’s history and the contributions of today’s students, faculty and staff in continuing the legacy of the university’s founders.

 

Duke Arts

Spring showcases are a highlight for academic art departments, so when performances and exhibits had to go online during the pandemic, Duke Arts produced a video that caught the magic of student artists. The video, produced with the assistance of Zoning Media and Katy Clune, and directed by Aravind Ragupathi, was nominated in the Arts/Entertainment category.

“This was the first time all of our academic art departments came together to celebrate student accomplishments in a single showcase event,” said John Brown, vice provost for the arts, who envisioned the Duke Arts Student Showcase.

The Midsouth Regional Chapter is one of 19 nationwide chapters of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), which is a professional service organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, educational and technical achievements within the television industry.