Case study 2-Emil Nava

Emil Nava

Emil Nava started off as a runner for film production companies such as Blink Productions. After working as a runner Emil graduated to Assistant Director where he would be able to manage video shoots. As a result of his success, he got signed to Academy, known as the biggest music video production company and then worked for Between the Eyes. He now works for Pulse and freelances OB Management. OB Management often work with Pulse Films, Rocket, Agile Films, Friends and Wonda. They describe themselves as "three straight up dudes who work out of Denmark Street London" with aims to nurture talent, work with production companies, work with record labels and match the right director to the right artists.

Emil's first budget music video was for the band Kid British and the song was called Our House.This music video had a budget of £20,000 and they filmed all of it in just one day. For the cast of the video they used local people this saved money, also the location of the film was in Manchester. The music video took around 2/3 days for editing this shows the very tight timescale some music videos have and the sort of budget some music video directors have to work with. This music video had 10 days of pre-production.   

The busiest for Emil has been that he has made 24 music videos in one year. When he staring shooting videos for independent labels, the budgets would be £5,000 to £10,000. His most expensive video to date has been for Jessie J and the budget was £160,000.


Jesse J - Wild was filmed by Nava and shows how his career has progressed from that of simplistic and rather low budget independent music video maker to a successful film maker of commercial artists such as Jesse J. When assessing this studio based video, the idea of the video seems to be to place emphasis on Jesse J with a pure white studio background which relates well to the content of the film in the sense that she is talking about her life and where she has ended up and how she has reached fame. Her iconic outfits and the purity of the studio represents the idea of fame and fortune and Nava has done a good job in directing the content of the video in the sense that he incorporates the supporting artists into the video to a great extent and allows the same message to be portrayed through these men.


Emil has taken a big step in the media industry by creating adverts which generally have a far higher budget and production value but allowed of less creative freedom. The advert that Emil directed was the L'Oreal ' Dare to be Different'. 


Emil's Top Tips include: 

Using Extreme Close Ups on faces wherever possible ; 
Do not shoot whole of video in medium shot/long shot. 
Similar to Sinead O'Connor- Nothing Compares to U and Godley & Creme - Cry