Nadaav's Comedic Opera

Photography by © Jane Hobson

Originally written and shot in 3 days as part of a film challenge, The Opera Singer is a short by filmmaker Nadaav that very nearly wasn’t made, “11pm the night before the shoot the location and the sound recordist pulled out. The first call to cancel the shoot was made to Hugo who I’d cast as the Studio Engineer (we met at an actors workshop). He sounded surprised and told me, in a tone that suggested he thought I knew; that he was a sound recordist with his own recording studio” explained Nadaav. “The shoot went ahead and in the end he acted, recorded the sound and provided the location - in a fluke of casting, I’d cast the studio engineer to someone who actually was a studio engineer!” The films potential for live performance played out different than expected with the omission of the ringtone sound from the film – friends were planted to play there ringtones on cue throughout the cinema taking the audience somewhat by surprise.

Nadaav has two films (The Opera Singer and There’s Green in this Green) accepted into the Virgin Media Shorts competition, with The Opera Singer making the editor’s choice shortlist. There are several awards up for grabs, for those wishing to add there voice to coveted audience choice award, you can vote for your favourite here. With the remaining prizes judged by a panel which includes, Thandie Newton, James King, the guy who made Four Weddings and a Funeral and a specially selected 15-year-old who took her GCSE’s a year early.


Photography by © Jane Hobson

Produced in 2008 There’s Green in this Green formed part of a trilogy of short documentaries exploring the career highs and low of entrepreneurs. Nadaav turned down funding from an airline in favour of Fortis bank believing it to be the safer option. “About midway through the project I was on a plane back from Atlanta, Georgia, for this shoot. I landed at Gatwick and switched on my phone - it went crazy. It was 10 days after Lehmans collapsed and my sponsor had gone bankrupt!” explains Nadaav. Despite set backs the project went ahead, the lawyers we able to extract funds to complete the project - this is the first time this film has been seen publicly.

Nadaav remains guarded about his future projects although he did let slip that he has a 10 minute slapstick piece on sleep and more documentaries of an ambitious nature in the pipeline.

He remarks “It's all a long way from the second time I picked up a camera”: