In the lead-up to her album Glass House, jazz vocalist Isabelle Seleskovitch asked me to direct a lyric video for her single Letters. The initial idea was simple: a one-shot performance filmed along the Quai de la Seine, used mainly as a visual base for animated typography.
The video itself wasn’t meant to take center stage. The lyrics were.
We shot several clean takes of Isabelle lip-syncing, everything running smoothly—until it didn’t. Halfway through the shoot, the audio playback failed. Instead of stopping, I asked her to keep going.
She did.
What followed was a full performance in complete silence. No sync to chase, no technical safety net—just presence, movement, and emotion. When we reviewed the footage, that take immediately stood apart. It had a raw, focused intensity the technically “correct” takes didn’t. Covering it with large animated text suddenly felt like the wrong move.
So we flipped the concept.
Rather than placing the lyrics front and center, we decided to hide them.
The final video keeps the one-shot structure, but the words are no longer imposed on the image. They’re embedded in the environment itself—fading into walls, shadows, and the pavement along the Quai. The lyrics exist in the space, almost invisibly.
This approach mirrored the song perfectly. As Isabelle described it, the words behave like memories left behind in places we’ve passed through: still there, etched into the surroundings, but only noticeable if you slow down and look closely.
What began as a technical failure became the core idea of the film. By listening to what the footage wanted to be—rather than forcing the original plan—we turned a standard lyric video into something quieter, more intimate, and more honest.
If you’re looking for a music video director working in Paris who values intuition as much as structure, you can view my full directing portfolio or get in touch to talk about your next project.