The trailer for the new documentary, Dare to Dream, How Rotary Became the Heart and Soul of Polio Eradication, is only 2 minutes and 55 seconds long. It is free and is easily streamed right from the Dare to Dream website at daretodreamfilm.com. The trailer introduces the movie with Dr. John Sever talking about why in 1979 he recommended to then RI President, Clem Renouf, that Rotary should choose polio if the organization was looking to eradicate a single disease. Rotary clubs, and Rotary districts, can easily make time in virtually any club program or District training to show the 3-minute trailer and recommend to clubs that they can watch the first 16 minutes of the film as a free club program. Hopefully from there Rotarians will make the leap to dropping $25 to buy the film and learn the rest of our story. The purchase includes making an $18.75 contribution to Polio Plus.
The trailer does a great job of promoting the film if for no other reason that the quality of the production is readily apparent. If you haven’t seen it, well….here it is.
The back story to the trailer is interesting. First, we didn’t have the money to shoot an actual movie trailer so we used the first few minutes of the movie. The film didn’t originally have this introduction. After showing the film to test viewers we consistently heard from them that the first half of the movie lacked context. The script faithfully follows the story as told by Sarah Gibbard Cook in her book, Rotary and the Gift of a Polio Free World. The first half of the movie introduced a lot of different characters and stories, including “Daddy Allen,” the story of small pox eradication, and the creation of the 75th Anniversary Fund. Both Rotarians and non-Rotarians were a little frustrated because they didn’t know why they were wading through these back stories. We decided to write an introduction that would “set up” the first half of the movie and help the audience place the entire drama in its proper time and place.
Not that anyone should compare me to George Lucas, but it was interesting to learn that early tests of the first Stars Wars movie revealed a similar problem with his audience. They simply had no context for the story and complained that it didn’t make any sense. Perhaps the fact that some of his buddies including guys like Steven Spielberg made a difference, but the result was the famous Star Wars opening crawl. Do you remember watching this for the first time in the theater? Was there ever a time we didn’t immediately recognize “A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far Far Away…” It was followed by that iconic shot of the Imperial Star Destroyer soaring over our heads…our first introduction to George Lucas and CGI. (sigh) Here’s the crawl…
After I wrote a script for the introduction, Dare to Dream Director, Ilana Bittner, made another great choice in deciding that we wouldn’t use a narrator to read the script. Instead she decided to use some of the four hours of interviews we shot with Dr. John Sever interspersed with the text from the script. The result not only solved our problem of helping our audience settle back and enjoy learning the back story we were determined to tell, but also gave Dr. John the opening voice to the movie. Ilana and I were proud to give John both the first word and the last word in the movie, an honor we thought was well-earned.
So there you have it…”the rest of the story.” Please show this trailer to your Rotary club or at a District training. PETS trainings are being held all over the world at this time of year. Please consider taking five minutes to show the trailer to Dare to Dream and explain that clubs can enjoy the first 16 minutes of the movie (plus credits) as a FREE club program. And yes, if you care to you might ask Rotarians to buy the film and enjoy a wonderful story while making a donation to end polio forever.
For another great RFA post that discusses Star Wars and Rotary, check out Let the Force Awaken Your Rotary Club.
Download the movie trailer, the free 18-minute movie trailer, or purchase the film at Dare to Dream, How Rotary Became the Heart and Soul of Polio Eradication.
Follow Dare to Dream on FaceBook at daretodreamfilm.
Follow Dare to Dream on Twitter at @daretodreamfilm.
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