Feature-length docudrama depicts a son’s retracing of his long-deceased father’s most adventurous, life-altering achievement — a pioneering expedition in 1935 to explore by amphibious airplane the Amazon River basin and jungles of northeastern Brazil.
Over the course of the expedition's 15,000-mile cross-country and island-hopping re-creation, the son’s journey becomes as much a psychological one, enabling him to learn dimensions he had never known of both his father and himself — discoveries that, in turn, enable the son to understand his father’s quest for a ‘higher purpose,’ reconcile his past relationship with his father, and create for himself and his family a legacy beyond their material wealth, beyond the son’s addiction to alcohol.
Aired initially on The Hallmark Channel and repurposed thereafter by its sponsor, S.C. Johnson & Son, for a variety private and public screenings, including public tours of the company’s headquarters campus and Fortaleza Hall (here and here), and as video clips for daily exhibition in the EAA’s AirVenture Museum.
Project researched and conceived, and the original, general-audience cinema and television version written and directed, by Dugan Rosalini. Produced by Rosalini Films in 16 countries on 3 continents over four years. Available for viewing on request.
"Mr. Rosalini brought great cinematic skill to a very challenging project…to create a memorable cinematic record of an important event in my family's and my company's history." — Samuel C. Johnson, Chairman, S.C. Johnson & Son (full Letter of Recommendation here)
"…delivered absolutely on budget and on time. Even more significant, the film helped our former Chairman, Mr. Sam Johnson, say things that he had not had an earlier opportunity to articulate." — James P. May, Director of Corporate Affairs Worldwide, S.C. Johnson & Son (full Letter of Recommendation here)
"…a personal epilogue to the importance of family…and a son’s reconciliation with the past." — The Washington Post
“ …an extraordinary exception in the annals of executive image-building.” — The Wall Street Journal
"'Carnaùba' is one of the most beautiful and artistic documentaries to be produced in a long time." — The Tribune Review
PRINCIPAL EXHIBITION: cinema/special event venues
SECONDARY: television
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PRODUCTION NOTES:
• 100% original, 1.85 live-action 35mm cinematography; i.e., no stock footage, no CGI/green-screen compositing of aircraft into background plates and no 4-ounce GoPros. Instead, 30-pound film cameras with 400’ loads.
• All B&W scenes lit for B&W cinematography and shot on Eastman Tri-X B&W negative; i.e., no dialed out color.
• Dual-camera aerial filming using a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter with a Tyler side mount and a special, Rosalini-designed and -STC’ed nose mount (no drones). The helicopter was also utilized to ferry into isolated and difficult locations the project’s two camera crews for the ground-to-air filming, as well as assist coordination between those crews and the S-38’s pilots for shots requiring blind-approach flybys.
• Logistical support aircraft included a Cessna Grand Caravan on floats, a Cessna Citation, and two Dassault Falcon 900’s with a rotating crew of 22 pilots and 4 maintenance technicians.
• Rosalini Films’ documenting of the underwater search for the original expedition’s aircraft took place in Western New Guinea (the Indonesian province of Papua, formerly Irian Jaya).
• The voice-over of Sam Johnson is performed by actor Danny Goldring, while an abbreviated, corporate version of the film — produced by the S.C. Johnson & Son company to memorialize its late chairmen, H.F. Johnson and Samuel C. Johnson — is of a more conventional documentary style and format, featuring mainly Sam Johnson on-camera and voiceover, but utilizing the original film’s location footage as B-roll and preserving nearly all of the original’s dimensions of personal discovery, reconciliation and redemption.
(This derivative version and the video clips for YouTube viewing, weekly public screenings in S.C. Johnson & Son’s Golden Rondelle Theater, and display daily in the EAA AirVenture Museum’s permanent ‘Carnaúba’ exhibit are located here.)
• Given the film’s ubiquitous aviation component and Mr. Johnson’s passion and acclaimed philanthropy in the field of aviation, ‘Carnaúba’ premiered at the EAA’s annual AirVenture event, “The World's Greatest Aviation Celebration” with attendance totaling more than a half-million from 80 countries.
(The EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) is an international organization of nearly a quarter-million member individuals, associations and companies that “nurtures the spirit of flight through a worldwide network of chapters, outreach programs, and other events.”)
• Given the multi-year/multi-continent extent of the project; the cost of building the S-38 replica; the support aircraft and personnel committed to the project, including the full round-trip use of S.C. Johnson & Son’s helicopter (requiring two pilots and a rotation of several); both the behind-the-scenes and on-site participation of dozens of the company’s executives, including its chairman (Sam Johnson) and his two sons; the project’s public relations and advertising tab, etc., the ‘Spirit of Carnaúba’ is likely the most expensive film production outlay ever by a non-entertainment industry corporation.
THE PROJECT’S INCEPTION
Filmmaker Dugan Rosalini came upon the history of the 1935 Carnaúba expedition while doing research for a project that S.C. Johnson & Son had contracted his company to produce — a film promoting environmental sustainability, featuring a provocative conversation directed by Rosalini between the company’s then Chairman, the late Sam Johnson (1928 - 2004) and then World Wildlife Fund CEO, Kathryn Fuller.
During pre-production of the SCJ/WWF project, Rosalini advised ‘Sam’ (as he was affectionately addressed company-wide) that a filmed depiction of his father’s expedition would make not only an inspirational vehicle for the company’s employees, but also a colorful and moving program to be enjoyed by a general-public audience as well.
More than five years later the idea caught fire when one of Sam’s fellow EAA board directors (the late R.W. “Buzz” Kaplan) proclaimed the ability of his company (Owatonna Tool Works with the participation of Aviation Hall of Fame builder and pilot Gary Underland) to reverse engineer and then build for Sam — from archive photographs and the scant working drawings that could be found — a flying replica of the aircraft Sam’s father had seen in Chicago’s 1934 Century of Progress Exposition and later bought for the expedition he would lead: the S-38 Amphibian, designed by the great aeronautical engineer, Igor Sikorsky, as his first commercially-successful airplane.
On this offer, the project truly took wing for Sam — a pilot himself and now a successfully recovering alcoholic — when he realized the opportunity to retrace his father’s expedition in an identical airplane. In Sam’s words, “…to step back in time do it just like him.”
Sam invited his two sons (both pilots themselves) to join him and then coined the undertaking “The Spirit of Adventure” to be shared with and instilled in the hearts and minds of his company’s ‘family’ of 13,000 employees worldwide.
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
To tell the essential psychological dimensions and revelations in the ‘Spirit of Carnaúba’ film, a close working and trust relationship existed between Sam Johnson and filmmaker Rosalini. This developed over the 4-year term of the project, including the multi-year construction of Sam’s airplane, during all stages of the film’s production, and even before production began in the course of the many trust-building recreational/ “extracurricular” activities the two spent together.
Among these were frequent lunches in the company’s cafeteria, attending several yearly AirVenture events, and sharing the cockpit in more than a dozen location scouting, training, and just plain recreational flights that Sam piloted in the Racine area and southeastern Wisconsin. Sam invited Rosalini for visits at his vacation homes in northwestern Wisconsin and the Bahamas — visits that included fun activities with Sam’s wife, “Gene” (the late Imogene Powers Johnson), other family members and friends, and another of Sam’s favorite pastimes: fishing. The two once spent an afternoon of deeply contemplative time together in Sam’s earliest childhood home (preserved by the company as a meeting facility and retreat) and visiting the Johnson family mausoleum.
Trust between the two men grew so strong that Sam suggested to Rosalini that he interview his personal therapist in order to gain a further-articulated understanding of Sam’s psyche. With Sam’s permission to breach patient/therapist confidentiality, Rosalini twice met with Sam’s therapist where they discussed a wide range of Sam’s life experiences and ambitions — those both of his childhood and as an adult.
From these invaluable interviews and the time Sam and Rosalini spent together, Rosalini learned much of Sam’s relationships with his father, mother, other family members, close friends and employees; of his commitment to maintain his sobriety in overcoming his addiction to alcohol; of his heartfelt motivations for retracing his father’s expedition; and of Sam's genuine enthusiasm for instilling among his family members and employees his own ‘spirit of adventure.’ Ultimately, this perspective helped shape not only the content and tone of the film, but the foundation of a meaningful friendship, as well.
