For Billy Rood's first exclusive fashion story for Ben Trovato, The Abandoned.
Billy Rood’s film Rather Lovely Thing mixes a world of fantasy and romance, while seducing the viewer into a dreamlike state. Rood, whose work has been featured in Bambi Magazine, The Dirty Durty Diary, Factio, KITTEN, and not to mention Ben Trovato, delves into deep into a poetic world in his new film.
Rood explains the theme, “It’s about a young woman’s inner search for a sense of beauty that unlocks the alchemy that forges hope from fear. It’s not about the unreachable standard that decorates museum walls, the decor of her mind, found along the elusive divide between dream and reality.”
It’s easy to get seduced by the main character, Isabella Farrell, who straddles the two different realities throughout the entire film. Rood explains, “Isabella is very talented, she’s not only beautiful, but she can also dance, sing, act and model. Her potential attracted me to create a project that not only showcased all of those talents, but to tell a story that I was inspired to create by my muse, Katrina Hoernig. I wanted to create a film about beauty, the kind that we all feel on the inside.”
The short film uses a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, A dream within a dream to really highlight the different themes of reality throughout the film. Rood explains, “It’s a very popular and personal poem that means so many things to me. In his poem Poe uses the sea as a setting for what I take as death and decay. In my film, I used an imaginary forest because it leaves me with a feeling of emptiness and regret to the combination of two aspects of reality. This film is an attempt to visually communicate that poem into a story of a girl who is looking for her inner sense of beauty in a world of colliding realities.”
Lastly, Rood explains the formula for making a short film,
“Just like anything else, have passion, a clue and lead…because people will follow a dream.”
Indeed they will.
Credits
Factor Women presents a Fig Films & Andrew Benz production
a film by Billy Rood
“Rather Lovely Thing”
Starring Isabella Farrell
Produced by Jan Berendsen, Richie Keo, Billy Rood, James Gustin & Andrew Benz
Cinematography by Andrew Benz
Styling by Dana Hanegraaf
Hair & Makeup by Kerre Berry @ Chicago Emerging Artists
Production design by Chelsea van Midde
Set design by Thomas Kubik & Billy Rood
Music by Eric Hillman
Unit production manager Allison Anderson
Script supervisor Justin Nijim
Craft services Ashlee Stewack
Production assistants Idris Oladipo & Andrew Winkler
Special thanks to Samantha Pletzke & Marta Traskevych
Steadicam operator Carl Wiedemann
Gaffer Jordan Balderas
Best Boy Ryan Gasser
Director of Photography Andrew Benz
Produced, Written & Directed by Billy Rood
