The Celtics are at the top of their game. They led the NBA’s regular season with a 64-18 record, young stars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum hit 10,000 career points and the team has been breaking records nonstop — and documenting it all is a 20-year-old with a vision for greatness.
Gage Duchon was a junior in high school when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the former high school lacrosse star had to find something else to fill his time.
“I’ve been a big sports player my whole life and sports were a huge part of my life growing up,” Duchon said. “So I just started to teach myself how to edit videos and I did that with sports footage.”
But what began as a “quarantine hobby” has turned into much more.
Duchon started at Northeastern as a communication studies major in the N.U.in program, but when he got to campus, he set his sights on video production.
“I actually originally just bought a ticket to a [Northeastern] men’s basketball game and brought my camera in the stands with a friend and shot game,” Duchon said. “I found someone to email at Northeastern who did video stuff … and then it kind of just built a relationship with them and [I] started to make stuff for the team and that got a lot stronger.”
All he wanted to do was shoot basketball, so he put his all into it. As a first-year student, Duchon went to Northeastern team practices, got to know some players and even traveled with the team to an away game.
By the time his second year rolled around, Duchon was looking for more. He wasn’t set to start his co-op preparation class until the spring, but his roommate was already on the hunt for a job, so Duchon took the opportunity to see what was on NUworks, Northeastern’s job-search database.
“When I was doing my co-op search, it was me and him sitting in a room in [International Village] and just to see what it looks like, I looked up ‘Bruins,’ ‘Red Sox,’ ‘Celtics,’” said Peter Ells, a third-year mechanical engineering major and Duchon’s roommate. “And then I said to him ‘Celtics only have one job, it’s this digital production, digital media production something,’ and he’s like, ‘Wait, that’s the exact job I want.’”
After consulting with his roommate’s co-op advisor, he was told he couldn’t apply yet, but that didn’t stop him. Duchon applied for the job — as a part-time intern rather than a co-op — and within a week, it was his.
“I think he knew he had to start at some point, but when he saw this opportunity pop up for the Celtics, he just decided to throw his hat in the ring,” said Scott Duchon, Duchon’s father.
For over a year now, Duchon has been a part-time video producer for the Boston Celtics. He goes to every home game, films everything from press conferences to warm-ups and edits videos for social media.
“I’m super grateful,” Duchon said. “I have to continue to take a step back and be like ‘Man, a year ago, this is all I ever wanted.’”
Duchon said he is currently on a leave of absence from his academics to focus on his career, but it wasn’t always that way. In getting a jumpstart on his career, the college student started the job with the Celtics while also taking classes full time and being a star of the Northeastern University club lacrosse team.
Now that he’s able to put his full time and effort into his passion, Duchon’s videos have gained major traction and recognition. His personal Instagram account has over 16,000 followers and tens of thousands of views on every video, and factoring in the Celtics’ social media, his reception reaches into the millions.
“I could never have imagined how much attention some things I would do just on a whim in a few hours, randomly doing it, would [get],” Duchon said.
All of what he does is self-taught. From editing techniques to music and sound design to finding the right lighting and angles, Duchon has become a leader of his craft from the comfort of his own bedroom, and his friends and family note his humility, commitment and point of view in getting him this far.
“He has some other people that I think he bends their ear as mentors, but he really just puts in the work himself,” Scott Duchon said, “And I think that’s part of the thing that drives him.”
Although the videos themselves are his own work, Duchon gives credit to the people around him, highlighting how the team atmosphere makes the job invigorating.
“I work in a team with such amazing people who empower me and put me in positions to succeed,” Duchon said. “I might be the one solely making one video, but it’s a whole team effort in the grand scheme of things.”
In his past year with the Celtics, Duchon has been given various video assignments on top of his own freeform content, but the vision is always his own. He finds inspiration from the players, and tries new techniques influenced by the work of other creators.
“He’s been able to expand what he’s doing and try out new things,” Ells said. “And it’s really just in the video output [that] shows his growth as an editor and obviously his increase in passion for what he’s doing because the videos now are unbelievable.”
Getting his videos on a national stage has launched Duchon’s media presence in full force, and with the Celtics in the playoffs, that doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.
“Everybody is telling you that you’re the best and it’s like ‘Well, I mean, I don’t agree with that,’” Duchon said. “I think I’m just getting started, and I have so much more that I want to do.”
