CAROLYN MERKLEIN
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The Cuban Missile Crisis ​Musical Medley!

A BFA Thesis Film
Three nations tell their side of the Missile Scare using three popular songs contemporary to the crisis.

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​Together their narratives form a miniature opera about the fear, romance, and pride that almost lead to nuclear war, and the compromise and communication that prevented it.
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In My Defense...

Personifications of nations have been used for centuries to make historical narratives and international politics engaging and relatable on a human scale - in propaganda, in satirical comedy, and, more recently, in lolzy webcomics and bad anime.

However, in these depictions, the national personification is always a being out of time - with no sense of past or personal history beyond the artist's social statement or stereotypes joke. 


I want to build on the national personification tradition by presenting them as a rounded characters to tell otherwise emotionally inaccessible historical narratives with empathy.  

My goal in this film is to provide an emotionally resonant retelling of the Missile Scare events through a 2D animated jukebox musical, starring the national personifications of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the Republic of Cuba.

And some pretty pictures. That's important, too. 



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Arms Race

The Making of My Thesis
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Production time: 11 months, June 2017 - May 2018
Film length: 6m1s
Hand-drawn animation: ~1,200 frames, mostly twos, some ones, some threes.
Backgrounds: 80
Craneshots: 2


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Character Design

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Palettes

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Backgrounds

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Beat Boards

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Mid-Year Storyboard Pass

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