François Nemetä

( About the video for ’Isobel’ )

Isobel was filmed for two days in a forest near Llangollen, North Wales, plus one "long" day in Black Island Studios in London on May 31, 1995. The crew used a Mitchell S35 camera with a varispeed, "to be able to rewind the camera and do superimpositions/masks, as Melies used to do in the 1900’s." Film stock : Kodak 5231 (b&w)

Was it tough getting the projections to appear inside the water-organ ?

It was a complicated mirror-trick. The screen for the rear projections is huge and needs much distance, so we had to shoot in one of the biggest studios of London.

Who built the model planes & sets ?

An english model maker crew "Model Solutions" built the harmonium. [They] had just done some models for a Pink Floyd CD cover. The Art Dept (Joseph Bennett crew) brought the model planes, light bulb field, insects...

What was your role during production ?

Trying to get it done !

What do you remember about the shoot ?

rainy rainy rainy, muddy, slippery rocks by the river...
very tough. I think no one would understand what was all this about. especially for me who was walking with a crank (after a badly-broken leg) and michel was not quite sure of everything...

but he was not the only one : björk didn’t like her outfit after the first day of shoot, that’s why she finally wears two different oufits in the finished vid. Björk is such a nice person : as she could see everyone was working hard for her video, she would come on the shoot and stay even when she had nothing to shoot, just playing music (boards of canada) on her ghetto-blaster for the crew... so nice, so anti-star, so simple. And she would really involve in the creation process, watching, being interested in every shot we did and how we would make it.

The accomodations for Björk and Michel were planned in a very beautiful old hotel in Wales, but Björk came with her camping tent, put it in the garden of the hotel and preferred to sleep in it !

when the video turned out to be so good and beautiful, we had a projection of the finished video for the crew in a cinema in London. So it means that a 35mm positive copy was printed, unlike 99.9% of actual music videos.

/www.director-file.com/gondry, 2007