Sherif Francis

Born in August 4th 1979 in Minya, Egypt, is a well known as one of the most famous music video director in Greece primarily known for the success of his music videos. Also a recipient of a gold album as a music composer for several music hits he produced.

Early Life
Son of famous director of photgraphy Nady Francis and Magda Abaskharoun, both of whom once married, moved to Greece before Sherif was born, since Nady Francis was part of a filming production crew that was to spend months in Greece to film episodes for an Egyptian television series.They ended up staying for so long that eventually they decided to remain permanently in Greece.

Due to Nady Francis' hectic filming schedule while Magda was pregnant with Sherif, she felt it would be better for her to deliver him near her family. So she flew to Egypt to deliver Sherif and once he was capable enough to travel, returned to Greece.

Sherif grew up in Athens Greece, and attended the British school Byron College Athens where he graduated in 1997.

Career
He attended in 1997 the University of Indianapolis Athens where he studied Computer Science. There he was introduced to Cool Edit a simple Digital Audio workstation. There he got attracted to the notion of creating music and started to make his first music, through which he mastered the use of digital recording and audio mixing

While studying he also worked as a Dj where he met up with others interested in music production and together they formed a hip hop group. He was the Dj and producer.

He worked at a software development company during the day,where part of his duty was to record and mix sounds and voices for the software developed by the company, while pursuing a music career with his hip hop group. The group itself did not amount to much, but due to the amount of concerts he arranged, it gave him the necessary skills that would later help him in his career as a director.

In 2005 a letter arrived at his home, it was to be the catalytic event that would eventually lead him to his current career. It was addressed to his father, who at the time happened to be at a film/production studio near his house. He went there to deliver it to him, and there he was introduced to the then famous music director George Gavalos. George was then setting up a recording studio primarily to record voice overs for commercials and was looking to hire a sound engineer to run it. After seeing that Sherif was well acquainted and experienced in voice recording and mixing he offered him the job which he accepted and quit his previous job.

The recording department did not fair well, and rather than firing him George requested that he be moved to the editing department and learn Avid media composer. There he quickly learned how to edit, and soon enough was one of the primary editors for George Gavalos and was editing videos of famous artists such as Michalis Xatzigiannis Anna Vissi and many more famous singers. There he learned all aspects of post production, and all the elements that constituted a successful music video.

While still working there, he decided to revisit the Greek Hip Hop scene that he had left this time as a Director. So he started on his spare time filming and editing music videos for local hip hop artists. The level of work at the time spread his name through out the hip hop community in Greece.

In September 2008 he was let from the company due to budget cuts, there he took it as an opportunity to work full time as an independant director for small artists and groups. At the beginning he also worked as a videographer covering the behind the scenes of photoshoots of celebrities for prestigious magazines.

As luck would have it well known singer Giorgos Alkaios had just opened a record label and was looking for someone to direct videos for his artists. Knowing Sherif from his previous job he at first asked him to edit his DVD that was to be released with his latest then album To Diko Mas Paramithi. This meant that Sherif and George would spend a lot of time together giving Sherif the opportunity to showcase his knowledge on filming and directing.

At the time George was bidding for the spot to represent Greece at the 2010 Eurovision which he won. He then hired Sherif to direct the video clip. It was his first major video clip and at the time was perhaps the youngest director in Greece to do a music video for Eurovision.

The music video was a strong addition to his videography which through his close friend Carlos E Perez, then guitarist of known rock band Real brought him in contact with Sony Music Greece to direct their latest single "Oti Aksizei" which happened to have previously already been filmed, but was rejected by the band leader. Sherif proceeded to direct the video. The result and later success impressed the heads of Sony, and thus opening for him the door to directing for major labels.

Since then Sherif proceeded to direct music videos, a lot of which went on to be major hits in Greece thus establishing him as one of the most successful music video directors. Most notable videos are that of Vegas' Fili which not only did he direct it but also composed the song. It went on to become one of the most successful songs and videos in Greek modern pop music and becoming the first Greek Music video to surpass the 10,000,000 views mark.

Sherif's video clips have generated millions of views being the only director so far in Greece to have 4 videos each with over 10,000,000 views from official YouTube channels. These videos are Vegas - Fili Vegas - Pio Psila Midenistis ft Demy - Μια Ζωγραφιά (Ο Κόσμος Μας) and Mattyas - Secret Love