For her third Gondry video, Björk retreats back into nature. The story is about a girl named Isobel, a character invented by Björk and her friend when they were children.
According to Björk, Isobel was born in the forest. After the pebbles turned to skyscrapers, she ends up a grown woman living in the city with only instinct as her guide. Isobel dances naked on tables and falls in love with all the wrong people and causes pain. "So she escaped and isolated herself," explains Björk. "That's why she's called Isobel and not Isabel."
The video is a black-and-white lyrical narrative, which includes these and other elements. Varying exposures, lighting effects, and a monochromatic schema make the video look similar to an early film.
Similar to Human Behaviour, Isobel is the story of multiple persons represented by one Björk. Person One: Isobel weaves and composes this world and this story on her organ. Person Two: the story of Isobel is a tangled web indeed, as she is born "from the tiniest spark." Isobel hides many secrets in her isolation. Her world is unique and primal. Tiny bi-planes are moths. Ants run around the city like people.
Water is the primary feature in her world. Gondry uses water as a dreamy transition tool between scenes. Like many Gondry videos, Isobelís different realities blur, calling each world and reality into question.
"Michel explains very well the way I create my songs. When I write, I plant little seeds. Then, the question is: When will they be ripe? And that is up to Michel. For example, my favorite Michel video is Isobel. It's Michel who found the poetry in it. He also found the thread we had on the first videos: Human Behaviour, Isobel and Bachlorette... It's the same story with the same character who is neither Björk nor Gondry but a third person: us. It's the story of a girl frightened by adults - a teenager who becomes aware of her femininity - then an instinctive character who discovers her femininity, with the good sides and the bad sides. In the end of Bachelorette, she realises she would be better where it all started: in the woods, alone. These videos are my different sides." (Les Inrockuptibles n°185)
Q&A with François Nemetä
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.
