Music video director Yasser Samy has made a name for himself by bringing new singers’ material to the small screen with work that has varied from some of the most obscenely dreadful clips ever to be caught on tape to others that can only be called exceptionally inspired.

The son of TV commercial director Mohammed Samy, who at one time headed Al-Ahram Advertising Agency, Samy Jr. spent his childhood following his father through soundstages and editing rooms — and even pitched in with the occasional ad idea and storyboard.

During his teen years, while studying mass media and communications at Sixth of October University, he was assigned major real-world advertising projects that included a marketing campaign for Shell. He made his name, however, lensing videos for privately owned music channels.

Years into his career — and after profound apologies on his part, to both household audiences and the media, for directing exiled belly dancer Nagla’s notorious ‘clip with the horse’ — Samy is seeking redemption by directing a religious clip for Sheikh Mashary Rashed.

Yasser Samy: My father directed the first music videos for singers like Angham, Emad Abdel-Halim and Mohamed El-Helw, among many others. His main concept was to market the singer just like you would a product, and this is what I learned from him. I followed in his footsteps and succeeded in launching the careers of many unknown names. I also managed to re-launch the careers of other stars that were starting to fade away.

My first music video was for a singer called Mazen. He was a friend of mine, and practically had no money for the necessary budget. He had less than LE 14,000 on him, at a time when your standard video would cost around LE 120,000 to make.

He was astounded when I told him that his clip would feature a helicopter chase over the sea.

I succeeded in renting the necessary equipment, then went to my family’s summerhouse with a cameraman and a model — both of whom were friends of ours and each did his bit as a favor. When the clip was aired in the then-newly launched Melody Channel, everyone, especially other singers and music producers, thought it was a big production and didn’t realize that the helicopter scenes were computerized in post production.

After that, while working as creative director, I got a call from composer Essam Karika who, at the time, was still re-inventing himself as a singer. He had written a new song called “Romeo,” as a follow-up to his debut hit “Shankouti.” I didn’t appreciate the lyrics to his song, but nonetheless kept on meeting Karika on a daily basis for a week to discover his character and initiate an idea for the video.

The final clip was a reflection of his character: a poor young man who dreams of beautiful girls while living on rooftops. He then gets into trouble when he goes to the beach at Sharm El-Sheikh and is surrounded by beautiful women. It was a surprise, light-hearted hit that skyrocketed Karika to stardom and established my name.

Well, at first Hamada came to me with a song about Mother’s Day! But I told him that he must think of himself as an attractive heroic figure. We chose another song from his album entitled Al Eih (Say What) and I set it in an action environment where he played a con artist chased down by a beautiful, but rather naïve, policewoman.

Like my previous two clips, I resorted to computer graphics to compensate for the moderate budget. We created car stunts and other special visual effects influenced by the movie Matrix, which had just been released. When we were done and the clip was aired, it re-launched Helal’s career and ultimately earned him his first cinematic part in Eyal Habbiba (Lover Boys).

At first, I was hesitant to do another folkloric song so the media wouldn’t label me as being a director specialized in a certain music genre, but producer Tarek Abdallah convinced me otherwise. Not to mention that Saad himself is a funny and energetic person who cannot sit on a chair for five minutes — just like he appears in the clip for “Bel-Araby Keda” (In Arabic, Like This).

So I conceived him as a convict who manages to escape prison to go on and impersonate several characters during the 1919 revolution. The second song, entitled “El-Kalam Ala Meen?” (Who Are You Talking About?), also made use of his cross-dressing talents! But I tried to make it look like it was made on a larger scale production, as a ‘point-of-sale’ technique to polish his image among other singers.

I admit: I made a big mistake because some producers challenged me to create a success story, with a female singer, similar to that of Ruby. I was introduced to Tunisian belly dancer Nagla, who recorded a song called “Hatlob Eidak Bokra” (I Will Ask For Your Hand Tomorrow) and wanted to shoot a video for it. The producer wasn’t convinced with my original idea — that would have featured her as an ‘out this world’ spirit who falls in love with a musician — and both he and Nagla insisted on producing something more provocative.

After I declined several times, the producer doubled the budget. I remember him saying: “You can do magic comic work with Karika and Helal, but you can’t create an attractive singer?” Finally, I decided to do it, knowing that Nagla would be an instant success but will fade away in a month or two. Also, I didn’t put my name on the credits as director but as an artistic supervisor.

What I’d predicted came true, the song was a smashing success, but was pulled off the airwaves after both the media and viewers condemned it. Nagla then came back and asked me to direct another song for her, but it was too late, I had made an oath to my father not to repeat this mistake again.

Sheikh Mashary Rashed, whom I appreciate, approached me to shoot a second do’aa called Tala’a Al-Badr Alayna (The Moon Has Shone on Us) following his first one entitled Ella Salaty (Anything But My Prayer). When I first met him, I was surprised he was an admirer of my work; he especially liked the fly chasing Saad El-Soghayar in the song “Bel-Araby Keda.” The production budget (which was set to be around $100,000) satisfied my request to shoot on film stock for four days in Cairo and to use extras in a large-scale battle scene.

I just finished shooting two music videos that mark the return of composer and singer Hamid El-Shaery after five years off the scene. The first is Lesh Takhod Galby? (Why Take My Heart?) and is a duet with a singer called Dalinda, who was born in Libya to Bosnian parents. The second is a solo effort called Roh El-Samara (Dark Spirit). et