Clouds over Cuba is an interactive documentary produced for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library to commemorate the fifty year anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 2012. What techniques do the documentary makers use to depict the Soviet missile deployment as a crisis? How might Weldes evaluate the documentary? What do you like and/or dislike about the documentary as an interactive text?
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“Clouds over Cuba” is a very effective documentary in the sense that it convinces the viewer of the seriousness of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This documentary takes an interactive trip through the developments leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis and also explains in detail the step by step process of negotiations between the USSR and the United States. However, the piece that stuck out to me was the “what if” portion at the end of the documentary. The documentary presented in detail what nuclear fallout would have looked like if negotiations were never reached. It even went as far as to have people talk about the fallout as if it really happened, with fake backdrops showing the complete destruction of their surrounding areas. I personally liked this portion of the documentary because although the images and stories were disturbing, it made the whole crisis and the weight of the conflict more realistic. However, I do understand that some people would find this portion unnecessarily disturbing. Overall, I liked this documentary as an interactive text because it gave you more opportunity to dive into additional information if you wanted to with the pop ups on the bottom timeline. It was very concise and to the point while still providing interesting facts and graphics to go along with the dialogue. The portion at the end with fake nuclear war is what sets this documentary apart from most, how good or bad it may be for the overall documentary is up to the individual viewer.