All Work

Ford Motor Company · Team Rubicon

Call to Serve

2025 — Short documentary

0:00 / 0:00

The challenge

A story showing service beyond the uniform.

The dashboard of a Ford truck, “Built Ford Tough” between the gauges.

An unflinching, deeply human portrait of Dean Wagner — a former Army combat engineer haunted by two tours in Iraq. Struggling with survivor's guilt and isolation, he volunteers with Team Rubicon and deploys into the wreckage of Hurricane Helene. Amid the debris, he rediscovers the power of community, the grace of his wife Ginna, and a sense of purpose that war nearly erased.

Ford commissioned Think Less in April 2024 to make a film with its partner Team Rubicon, the veteran-led disaster response organization. Five months later Hurricane Helene made landfall, and the crew went with them. The film then had to reach further than Ford's own channels: Think Less took it from a festival short to a national premiere on ABC News Live, streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.

Client
Ford Motor Company · Team Rubicon
Scope
Strategy · Creative · Production · Post · Photography · Distribution
Delivered
Festival film, 16 minBroadcast cut, 23 minPartnership cut, 1:30Teaser, :60Key art, social and photography
“With Think Less, you’re not just hiring a team – you’re getting partners who go all in.”
Lauren VrazilekPurpose & Trust Communications Manager, Ford Motor Company

What made it hard

A crew in the field within two days of the storm.

Team Rubicon cleared the crew to join its route-clearance team on the day Helene made landfall, and Phil Hessler and Dylan Wineland were in the field within two days, filming a response already under way. Two weeks later Hurricane Milton hit Florida, and the film followed Team Rubicon there too.

  • 48 HRFrom landfall to the field
  • 5Shoots, Sept 2024 to Oct 2025
  • 2Hurricanes, Helene and Milton

What we made

A Team Rubicon volunteer in an orange hard hat.
Dean and Ginna on the tailgate, looking out over the water.
A man sitting alone in a stripped-out room at the Veterans Restoration Quarters.
Dean and Ginna in an embrace.
Team Rubicon sawyers clearing a fallen tree.
A figure on a pile of rubble holding a sign: “Hope… even when the creek rises.”

A 16-minute film that premiered at Tribeca X and won three 2025 Telly Awards, an extended cut that aired on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu on Veterans Day 2025, a partnership cut, a teaser, key art and a photography archive.

How we did it

How do you film a man rebuilding his life without getting in the way?

Small, and for a long time. The first crew in was two people, attached to Team Rubicon's route-clearance team. Four more shoots followed over thirteen months: route clearance again after Hurricane Milton, the Veterans Restoration Quarters, Dean's home in Melbourne with Ginna, and a return to Asheville for the broadcast cut. Directed and produced by Cole Sax and Phil Hessler, shot by Mack Woodruff and Dylan Wineland with Marcus Catlett, and edited by Sam Baiamonte and Jack Hessler.

  • 16 minThe festival cut
  • 23 minThe broadcast cut
  • 32025 Telly Awards

The series

  • Film01

    Call to Serve

  • Partnership cut02

    Ford and Team Rubicon

  • Teaser03

    Through service we rebuild

Key art

Call to Serve key art with ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.
  • Call to Serve poster: a Team Rubicon truck in the rain.
  • Call to Serve poster: a truck on an empty road through storm-stripped trees, from above.
  • Call to Serve poster: a truck under downed power lines.
  • Call to Serve poster: Dean’s face lit in cyan, with ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.

On the ground

Dean's story sits among the people he served with: Team Rubicon's Greyshirts clearing roads and gutting homes, and the veterans of the Veterans Restoration Quarters, a 250-bed home for veterans that became Team Rubicon's base in Asheville.

The crew filming an interview in a living room.
A helmet by a window with the American flag behind it.
A Team Rubicon volunteer behind the wheel.
The crew outside a house in Florida.
A face in the dark, lit by a screen.
Team Rubicon volunteers at the trucks before a shift.
A man reading in an armchair, head bowed.
Soldiers in the dust, from the film’s Iraq sequence.
A Team Rubicon volunteer in glasses, close up.
An interview set up in a living room, camera and lights on the subject.
A resident in front of his home after the storm.
A Team Rubicon truck at dusk, headlights on.
The crew filming at night under lights.
A Team Rubicon volunteer mid-conversation.
A camera operator kneeling with the rig.
A Team Rubicon volunteer with a white beard, in his truck.
Asheville from the air in autumn.
A camera operator in the reeds at golden hour.
A Team Rubicon truck on the road.
A camera operator at the back of a truck.
The Tribeca X panel on stage, 10 June 2025.
Phil Hessler and Cole Sax on stage at Tribeca X.

The result

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