22 year-old supercutter and video essayist Jorge Luengo, who lives in Madrid, says his most recent video, The Kubrick Gaze – posted on Vimeo on February 26 – is “the craziest video I’ve done and has nothing in common with any other of my video’s editing”. See for yourself:
Before this video, his supercut Pixar’s Tribute to Cinema went viral when it hit the internet about a month ago and has gathered over 1.3 million views to this day. It consists of almost five minutes of Pixar movie scenes which look the same as some of the most recognized live-action films in the history of cinema.
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Luengo states that the actual editing of his supercuts doesn’t take as long, because “the process [of constructing a supercut video] consists basically in watching a film and finding some constants or leitmotivs which grab my attention, and they become an idea to edit a video.” For example, another one of his works is based on Christopher Nolan’s focus on his characters’ hands. After finding out the idea he wants to work on, what takes him the longest time is watching the films and analyzing almost every frame to catalog what goes in his final product. Luengo explains, “In regards to the Pixar video, it has been the one that took me the longest [time to make] since I had to watch all Pixar films, many of which I’d seen when I was younger, but obviously, my film culture was not the same then.”
And watching those Disney and Pixar films as a little kid was what sparked his interest, but it wasn’t until he discovered Tim Burton’s Batman when he realized the power of movies beyond animation. He also became his favorite superhero: “He’s the most purely human of them all. Since childhood I have been a big fan of him.”
How does one go from loving film to editing supercuts? Luengo, in particular, says he’s attracted to evading himself from reality when watching movies and being able to empathize with the characters, but he also loves the technicalities of the making of films. He went to film school and practiced editing in his spare time, emulating the kind of supercut videos he’d see around the internet. “I love disengaging movies, and doing these type of videos, you tend to look a lot more for the cuts in each film”. This is why he likes being surprised by movies while at the same time paying attention to the photography, styling techniques and the editing, which is for the most part the focus of supercut videos.
And in seeing those videos online, he found authors he admires like Rishi Kaneira and Jacob T. Swinney. Luengo cites the latter’s First and Final Frames video as one of his favorites. But apart from directors like Nolan, Tarantino and Hitchcock, featured in several of his videos, the young Spanish editor claims video essayist Kogonada was one of his first inspirations to start creating supercuts. Many of Kogonada’s brilliantly crafted work has been featured in Vimeo’s “Staff Picks” channel. One of his most viewed videos is based on Kubrick’s One-Point Perspective technique in constructing shots, with over 2.2 million views (only second to Wes Anderson // Centered), which ties-in back to Luengo’s The Kubrick Gaze.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that one of Luengo’s favorite movies is Boyhood, which was edited across multiple years of filming. It was included in his Top 10 Movies in 2014 video, along with others like Inside Llewyn Davis, Wild Tales and Her. About some films he enjoyed in 2015, he cites Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, The Revenant, Sicario, Ex-Machina, It Follows, Inherent Vice and Star wars: The Force Awakens. And mentions new movies from Martin Scorsese, Nicolas Winding Refn, Ben Affleck and Clint Eastwood as the ones he’s looking forward to seeing this year, along with more commercially acclaimed like Suicide Squad and Jason Bourne, especially because the latter’s saga overall “has some of the best editing ever done”.
Jorge Luengo has edited videos exclusively featured on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel in Spain, collaborates with One Perfect Shot… What’s next for him? He says he’d like to edit a new Emmanuel Lubezki video, different from the tribute that first gathered international attention, “centered in something more specific from his work”. He also muses about making a video relating to “one of my favorite directors: Steven Spielberg”, who he hasn’t covered yet. Spielberg uses many interesting, rich-in-content filming techniques like framing characters with a foreground object or simultaneously showing the character’s reaction and the scene they’re reacting to through a window, glass, or even a reflection in the eye… which a supercut video could explore successfully.
Whether you’re interested in supercuts, movie technique compilations and clever edits or you simply love film, don’t forget to have a look at Jorge Luengo’s Vimeo page for more of his work.
