Jake NavaDirectors Research Task

Jake Nava is an accomplished director of music videos and commercials. He has worked with a variety of artists, some of which include Beyonce, Lana Del Rey and Adele. Whilst completing his film degree, Jake got his big break into the industry directing music videos and films for MTV Sports, travelling the world thinking up brave new ways to capture the main players of the extreme sports phenomenon that swept the ‘90s.

Responsible for many iconic pop clips, Jake is perhaps most widely known for his acclaimed collaborations with Beyonce including “Crazy in Love” and the brilliantly effective video for “Single Ladies,” recently listed by the Times at position number 3 in The 25 Most Influential Music Videos of all time. It charts as the 3rd most downloaded video in the world and won “Video of the Year” at MTV America, MTV Europe and BET Awards.  More recently he directed three music videos emerging from Beyonce’s ground breaking visual album (“Partition,” “Grown Woman,”

and “Flawless”) 

I enjoy Jake Nava’s work because he creates music videos that are visually exciting and dynamic, as seen in Beyonce’s videos. He uses colours and lighting to convey moods and as a stylistic approach, such as seen in Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’, ‘If I was a boy’, all of which used monochrome. By doing this, he empathises the branding of the artist by having a continuous style across her work. Mulvey’s male gaze theory can very much be applied to a lot of Jake Nava’s work, as in video’s such as Shakira’s ‘She Wolf’ and Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’, where both artists are dressed and dancing provocatively, therefore grabbing attention from the male gaze. Goodwin’s theory is also reinforced in Nava’s video, by having a voyeuristic treatment of the female body emphasised by a variety of constant close ups. Nava very much adopts different visual styles to different artists, such as in Adele’s ‘Someone like you’, where he uses a slower approach, by not including fast cuts and colourful experimental lighting. Therefore creating a simple yet effective music video.