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.

​​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.

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

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

Character Design

Palettes

Backgrounds

Beat Boards

Mid-Year Storyboard Pass