Case Study - Emil Nava

Emil Nava began his career as a runner for many different film production companies, one of which was Blink Productions. A runner is an entry-level position, the most junior role in the production department of a broadcast, film or video company. 

After working as a runner for a while, he graduated to Assistant Director where he would manage the video shoots and signed to Academy - who are the biggest music video production company. He then worked for Between The Eyes and now works mainly for Pulse, freelancing for QB Management.

Emil's first budget was for the band Kid British's track Our House. He was given £20,000 as budget for the video, which was located in Manchester and used the local people from the area as the cast. The entire music video was filmed and edited in three days, using ten days for pre-production. This demonstrates the skill used by music video directors to work under very tight timescales.

At his busiest, Emil made 24 music video in one year; when he began shooting videos for independent labels, the budgets he would be given would range from around £5,000 to £10,000. His most expensive video to date has been for Jessie J, with a budget of £160,000. This shows that for the director the more successful they are, the larger the budgets they may have for the music videos they will be required to make.

He was called upon by Sony to direct the music video for the song "Picking Up The Pieces" by Paloma Faith; with a budget of £80,000. This is 4x more the budget he had for his first video, which resulting in a higher quality in production. The picture quality is much better than his first video, mise en scene featuring very elegant house and designed to look very posh.

Also called upon by Island to direct the video for "Do It Like A Dude" by Jessie J, with the budget for the music video being £25,000.  Around the same budget as his first video, he uses what it seems to an abandoned building, the music video is very gritty with the cast smoking cigarrettes and wearing street clothes. It looks realistic, depicting activities that the youth of today would actually do. 

Apart from making music videos, he has now begun to make adverts, which generally have larger budget and production values but lack the allowance for creative freedom from the director. One of which for the L'Oreal Feria Hair campaign. This could be due the time allowed for the entire advert (20 seconds) and the emphasis on focusing on the product being advertised.

His Advice and Tips

Emil says that when filming a music video, that "extreme close ups should be used on faces whenever possible" and "to not shoot the whole video in medium shot/wide shot".  An example of a music video which uses this very well is for Sinead O'Connor song "Nothing Compares to You", her face alone is shown throughout, making a real bold statement. The lyrics present the feelings of longing from an abandoned lover's point of view, fitting with the music video, as it is sad and gloomy.