The 2011 K-film ‘City’ opens with the title page describing it’s premise. Bold white text is arranged on a purple backdrop; ‘How do you paint a city? How do you know a city? How do you write a city?’ It gives the audience a sense of the makers’ intention of the film in presenting the city (Melbourne) as a piece of artwork and becoming lost in it. The background also has some more smaller, more faint white text of adjectives such as, ‘slick, boring, adventurous’, showing just how diverse the city can be.

When you click into the film the background is of some Melbourne street art which remains the same throughout the film. Bassy instrumental music plays throughout the film and loops. White text appears along the bottom describing each clip. For example; one of them says, ‘This city is what it is because our citizens are what they are’.

The most interesting aspect for me to discuss is the interface used in ‘City’. It involves quite a large main frame which doesn’t loop, and four preview thumbnails that are arranged around the main frame. The previews vary in size and don’t line up with one another or the main frame, even overlapping over the main frame, obscuring part of the view. The fact that the previews obscure part of the view of the main frame does make it distracting to watch and can be irritating as you can’t see the entire clip. The previews become videos when the mouse is scrolled over the thumbnails which is a positive as it allows the audience to get a sense of what the clip will show before choosing to view it in the main frame. The sporadic arrangement of the interface can be distracting and take away from the film; while the sporadic arrangement of the interface does reflect the sense of creativity and art in presenting the city, it can be quite distracting with so many things dividing the audience’s attention. If the makers really wanted to keep the background, they should’ve considered using a more simple interface, or at least keep the previews the same size and in line, and not overlapping the main frame. Or the makers could’ve kept the interface choices but have a black background. This would minimise the competing information in the film. However, keeping the same interface throughout is a good choice by the makers as if it continued to change it would become too frustrating for the audience to view.

Another negative to the film is that some of the videos either haven’t been shot in the same position (portrait/landscape), or the aspect ratio is incorrect, meaning that there is a large black mask around some of the clips, making them smaller and inconsistent. This wouldn’t be as distracting if the interface was more simple as you could forgive the makers for having some inconsistencies, however because of the seemingly random/messy nature of the interface, this becomes unforgivable.

The quality of the videos are quite pixellated as well which contradicts the theme of ‘the city as a painting’ as it’s low quality doesn’t match that of a piece of artwork.

While this film does make its makers’ intentions clear, it becomes a frustrating film to participate in because of its competing information.