Elisa Baudoin Goes Full Windows 98 in Latest Music Video for Maelle

In her latest collaboration with Maëlle, Paris-based director Elisa Baudoin keeps pushing her mixed-media craft. This time rooted in Y2K nostalgia, lo-fi textures and a Windows 98 world built entirely from scratch.

The video opens on a Blue Screen of Death. Maëlle stares into camera, fur coat, full BSOD text filling the frame behind her. The visual language is set from there. What follows is part Windows 98 nostalgia trip, part Paris location film: drone crosswalk footage repurposed as desktop wallpaper, Explorer windows tiling multiple shots at once, MS Paint canvases splitting Maëlle across the frame. The references are specific. The era, the UI, the screen-within-screen logic. And the look earns them. Flat, fast, slightly overlit.

Elisa and Maëlle are longtime collaborators. When the budget came in tight, they leaned into it. Elisa took the lead on direction, editing and VFX, shooting the whole thing on iPhone across Paris.

“The budget was tight, but honestly that’s what freed us. Shooting on iPhone meant we could move fast, try things, throw them away. There’s no room for overthinking when you’re working like that. The lo-fi texture isn’t a workaround, it’s the point. And I think you feel that energy in the final cut”, explains Elisa Baudoin.

“Elisa keeps pushing herself with every project. The mixed-media approach, the lo-fi textures, the way she finds a visual language that feels completely her own. It’s exciting to watch that evolve,” says Thibaut Estellon, Founder/EP at REVERSE.

“Tic Tac” is the latest from Maëlle, winner of The Voice France at 17, the youngest and first female to take the title, with a gold-certified debut and second record Fil Rouge in 2023.