Film essay
Integrated media one 2014

The Korsakow project film that I’ve picked is “Kitchen Stories” (2012) made by Sebastian Tan, Liviana Andrain, and Nuraidah Binte Mohamad Taip. It’s a film about food, cooking and eating. I’ve watched a few Korsakow films before picking up on this one, and the main reason why it attracts me is because of the color and pattern of the film. I find the pattern of the film very interesting and I love the concept and design. The pattern of the film is arranged according to color sequence. It started off as Yellow, Red, Orange, to Red again. I find the pattern through the thumbnails, how they arrange it to the same color category, it immediately appeals to me visually. As Adrian mentioned in his blog, patterning is useful to help getting others to understand the value of reflective practice. One of the things that stood out the most for me was what Adrain said about patterns. We are natural pattern makers. Some things to think about in relation to patterns are speed, shape, colors, and interior or exterior. Through the thumbnails, I think the main relationship that are connecting the videos together are the color, they are structured in a color coordinated way instead of the ‘type’ of food.
Nonetheless, I find that the thumbnail, in this case, is lack of abstraction. Through the thumbnails, I could actually sort of get the idea of what is going to be in the video even before clicking into it. It sorts of reveal too much about what the succeeding clip will entail. After awhile, it gets boring because you already expect what is going to happen next. So I thought maybe it could be more abstract to coax the viewer along and maintain viewer’s fascination of the film.
Furthermore, this is work from students from three different countries and so they were encouraged to use their own recipes but also to narrate the recipes using their own languages. , I like the idea of how they use different languages to make connections across different food and cultures. However, it also sort of turning the film into narration. I think it was too limited and authoritarianism. Adrian has also mentioned that the K Film is about story telling, not narrating. I think this film limits the audiences to find out their own pattern and the meanings in their own thoughts.
I thought that the interface of the film was great. It was also one of the reasons why it attracts me. The interface fulfill majority of the spaces in a good way. I love how the background was filtered into light brown and blurry effects, I think it worked really well at the same time it did not overtook the attention away from the videos.
On the other hand, I think one of the things that could have been done better is the grid. I think they could have made better use of the space to build it up. It should be arranged into an aesthetically balanced view to make sure clips and thumbnails are aligned properly and correctly sized. But in this case, it wasn’t really clear to me. I also realize that due to the size differences of the thumbnails, some one the videos preview doesn’t fit perfectly. The composition of the video looks off in the thumbnails are in different proportions that the video. Perhaps the thumbnails size differences was intentional, so that the audiences view the videos closer to what the makers are trying to put across. I also realize that there were no text or caption inserted for any of the videos. However I do think there are pros about it. The pros are that since the soundtrack is narrating about the recipes, more text inserted might drag the attention away from the soundtrack and videos.
Lastly, I think that one of the things that the film did really well was the ‘Clouds’ that Adrain has mentioned about, which create multiple pathways and meaning to the film design of the work. The clouds in this film were connected in color thematic ways.

References:
http://vogmae.net.au/vlog/
http://vogmae.net.au/classworks/2012/KitchenStories.html