Jóga
Infos
Interview François Nemetä @ Director-File.com
François Nemetä est l’un des assistants de Michel Gondry
Technical stats gleaned from a 2006 e-mail conversation with Gondry’s then-assistant :
Jóga was filmed from 1-4 August 1997 in Iceland using a 6x6 camera, then scanned in high-resolution for post production. (Film stock : 400 rolls of Ektachrome 100 asa.) Michel shot Björk at the top of the hill with a Bolex (pics Bjork.com">here), but wasn’t happy with the outcome. "The film roll of the "bolex shots" wasn’t even transferred to video. As it was MY bolex, I kept the film roll - and transferred it later." Post production lasted about a month at BUF Compagnie.
Björk travelled with us (we were a very small crew in a minibus) and talked about places where she wanted to shoot.
How was the shoot ? Did anything go wrong ?
It was like holidays really, the days were like this : we were driving for an hour or two in a van, stopping at some point Björk knew or Michel saw, writing down where it was on a map to tell the helicopter pilot where it was and then keep scouting. Then the next day, they would sit in the chopper and fly off. They were taking pictures from up there, and that was it. They even tried from a small plane, but I think it was easier from the copter. we had extra fuel for the helicopter in our van.
basically it was pure holiday. The only hard thing was the weather. I remember that we were waiting for some clear weather to take-off in August and rain and grey weather... we were freezing cold. Summer in Iceland...
I remember clearly the scene on the black sand beach : Björk was doing her make up in the minivan, and then she would lie on the beach, and pretend to sleep. We were walking around her, taking pictures of her, and then take the copter to fly above her and shoot her from up there. But the cold waves were reaching her some time to time. And she was supposed to not move at all for about half an hour. and she didn’t. Truly this girl is an alien ! We were a small crew : Michel + photographer + his assistant + french producer + icelandic line producer, who was also driving us + myself. Plus Björk of course.
