Through his experimental project, shot and assembled during a period of two years, Vasco Diogo seeks to create an experience which can be best characterized by using the term ‘digital primitivism’. This involves placing constraints of the development of cinematographic imagery and storytelling and assessing the resulting visual flow from a differential lens. Although such constraints restrain the freedom of expression as we currently know it from mainstream productions, they foster the potential to create and emphasize other values and emotions.

 

This short project is mostly shot on an iPhone 5c and is put together using a variety of phone-based editing apps. The film largely consists of a flow of a seemingly unrelated set of images, each of them uniquely edited or emphasized. Vasco Diogo sometimes places variations of the same image on the screen at the same time, sometimes juxtaposes artworks or drawings with visual effects, and at other times even uses real pictures – house plants and clouds, for instance – for blending and intermixing purposes.

 

What was interesting to us revolved around how this whole stream was presented. 'Super Cut Free Way' is essentially a silent experimental – and by silent, we mean completely silent. It does not feature any musical background or any other sort of accompaniment except for complete silence. While having our doubts about such a presentation initially, we subsequently recognized the constraint nature such an absence represented, thus making the omission respectful toward the overall goal of the film.

 

Interestingly, we also observed how such an absence meant that the naturally occurring sounds characteristic to the location that we were watching the film in actually contributed to how it was experimented by us. The rhythmic noise of a fan, coupled with the ticks of a wall clock penetrated the complete silence which was being transmitted to us through the headphones, thus creating a context for the viewing experience. With this thought in mind, our interpretation of the stream of images probably took a wholly different meaning than in the case of other viewers.

 

Whether such a difference in perception was accounted for or not by the author remains largely irrelevant. Although the film did not blow us away, we feel that the absolute freeform liberty through which it showcases its themes, alongside the heightened emphasis on certain elements by conscious de-emphasis of others makes 'Super Cut Free Way' an interesting piece of art.