Nima Nourizadeh

He excels at making small budgets look big, and now award-winning music video director Nima Nourizadeh is venturing forth into adland.

"It's a pretty big number," he says, speaking from the agency's offices. "It's been the most insane job - and I can't believe I did it. It'll be a really fun one to watch." He then breaks into laughter. "Oh man! I'd love to tell you more, but I'm sworn to secrecy." Oh, go on... "No really, I can't!"

Affable, laid back - and liable at any moment to dissolve into giggles - this 31-year-old Londoner of Iranian extraction is on a roll. He is one of the leading directors of British music videos, making consistently inventive, stylistically varied and hugely entertaining work - invariably for the hottest and coolest acts in modern pop or indie rock, such as Hot Chip, Mark Ronson, Santogold, CSS and Flight Of The Conchords.

Last month, his work over the past year was recognised with his first major award: Best Director at the inaugural UK Music Video Awards. And now he's making his first steps into adland. Nourizadeh will not divulge any secrets about his ad for adidas Originals, but the word on the street is that it will be a hybrid between a music video and conventional commercial, featuring a stellar cast from the worlds of entertainment and sport - including Missy Elliot and David Beckham.

It's a bold and smart move for the Canadian agency to opt for Nourizadeh to helm this crucial element of their vital first adidas campaign. The director has learned his trade inhe increasingly brutal environment of the UK music video industry, and come up with outstanding results time and again. For example: Lily Allen in Jessica Rabbit-style cartoon form, Mark Ronson and the Kaiser Chiefs look on in Oh My God; Flight Of The Conchords' Bret and Jermaine performing rollerskate stunts in a sunkissed 1970s dreamland; exciting new singer Santogold astride a horse before a surreal that tune "It's a good way to break into commercials - not forgetting the way I work. I wanted people who understand the hectic, crazy schedules and the passion you need when you're making videos..." massacre inspired by cult director Jodorowsky for L.E.S. Artistes; Hot Chip re-interpreting Prince's Batdance from the 1989 Batman movie for Ready For The Floor.

Often working closely with the artists involved, Nourizadeh regularly reworks pop culture references (some mainstream, often not) that connect strongly with a youthful audience. And you can bet almost nothing costs as much as it looks. Budgets were already shrinking in UK music videos when Nourizadeh entered the industry. He's one of the best of the new breed. "I'm used to working with quite small amounts of money," he confirms. "You do become more resourceful - and to be honest Partizan have put themselves behind me. They make stuff happen." He has been based at Partizan's London office virtually since the beginning of his directing career as a member of the experimental, often provocative creative team, Imaginary Tennis Club - formed with fellow St Martins graduate Simon Owens - which joined Partizan in 2003.

But it was not until Nourizadeh branched out on his own that he started to really find his feet as a director. The breakthrough was hooking up with art school outfit Hot Chip not long before they signed a major label deal, and directing their video for Playboy. "We met through the label Moshi Moshi," he recalls. "I knew Michael [McClatchey, co-founder of Moshi Moshi] and he took me to see them play live. I was like: 'who the fuck are they?' They were amazing." Nourizadeh would be involved in just one more Imaginary Tennis Club video before he left to go solo. And it was his next collaboration with Hot Chip that completely changed the game for him. After directing a critically acclaimed one-take video for Architecture In Helsinki - shot on the helter-skelter at the end of Brighton Pier - he made the video for Hot Chip's major label debut, Over And Over. The video's winning conceit was how it deconstructed the process of making a 'green screen' special effects music video - but it's actually a combination of true insight into the making of such a video together with pure fabrication, wrapped in a visually exciting package. Over And Over - months in the planning and a real collaboration between Nourizadeh and the band - was a tour de force.

"That was the turning point," he confirms. The video's success meant he was free to jump between all types of music, and videos followed for Lily Allen and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, as well as hip-hop urchin Jamie T and angular indie outfit Maximo Park.

Nourizadeh stretched himself with each one, bringing new visual techniques to the service of the song and artist, rather than developing a signature visual style.

In Lily Allen's LDN, the singer walks through a London of two comic extremes, placed side-byside: the fairytale of her dreams, and analternative, appalling reality. In Hot Chip's Colours, a photorealistic, almost 3D version of singer Alexis' head starts bleeding colour.In Jamie T's Calm Down Dearest, home video footage of Jamie mucking around reveals a suited gremlin causing impish mayhem in his flat.

The reality is that under the relaxed exterior lurks the other Nourizadeh - the hard-working perfectionist. The driven director is going to do whatever is necessary to achieve his objective: entertain the hell out of you. His work usually involves a serious element of post production work - and in music videos at the moment, lack of money can translate into loads of anxiety.

"I'm not one to let other people get on with it [during post production]," he reveals. "I'm always there - and I can't work on more than one thing at a time. I find post really painful. At the end it could all look like shit through lack of money." Sometimes his own funds have gone into the work as he strives for the results he wants. Having now built relationships with bands like Hot Chip the pressure is on "to give it even more."

His most recent Hot Chip video for Ready For The Floor - which won Best Editing at the recent MVAs - is a case in point. A riot of playful visual ideas, around a core idea of lead singer Alexis (partly made up as The Joker) controlling the rest of the band, Ready For The Floor is arguably Nourizadeh's best stab yet at 'art'.

"I used up a year's-worth of sketchbook ideas in that video - it's just something I wanted to do because they're such a cool band. But it did take a lot out of me.

"Rather surprisingly, he reveals that he is "usually disappointed" with how his work turns out. But all the effort, allied to the talent, is clearly now getting him noticed beyond the UK. He recently directed hip Brazilian indie outfit CSS's new video - and earlier this year his first American production became his funniest video yet.


He was asked to script for the spin-off release from Flight Of The Conchords' acclaimed HBO comedy series - resulting in him directing the video for Ladies Of The World. "I was up against Weird Al Jankovic!" he laughs. "But they loved Over And Over - it still works."

The rollerskating theme of the video began when he saw a photo of Hugh Hefner in a denim safari suit and wearing rollerskates, surrounded, in Hefner fashion, by lots of women. "The clincher was making Bret and Jermaine do rollerskating stunts that looked really real.

"That was his most technically complex job so far. But Ladies Of the World is also great because it has one of the best intros in a video ever. As the hapless Kiwi comedy folksters sit on a park bench, a sleazy guy near them wearing rollerskates is telling two roller-girls, one on each arm, that he can get them in to a see a top band - and keeps repeating the same lines.

"I said to the actor, 'you're not a cool guy, but act like you are'. When we started editing, we were laughing so much we started repeating what he said. It was one of those beautiful accidents." Nourizadeh acknowledges that he is reaching a watershed with his videos. It is becoming increasingly difficult to reach and then exceed previously-set standards in the current environment. "Making videos doesn't get any easier. Every job is different, but you want to keep improving. Not necessarily bigger, but better." So he will not stop making promos - but the break into commercials with the adidas job gives him the chance to bring all his attributes to bear on a new and very exciting canvas.

"I really wanted to use people who'd had music video experience working on this job - the AD, the DP, the editor!" explains Nourizadeh. "It's a good way to break into commercials - not forgetting the way I work. I wanted people who understand the hectic, crazy schedules, but also the passion that you need when you're making videos. Of course I've noticed the difference between videos and commercials, but everyone here has been great, and very much in tune with what I like doing.

"In the new world of changing rules and tightening belts, Nourizadeh will still be laughing.