Marcel Deane 12-CA-1

City of God Redraft

In the opening sequence of ‘the city of god’, low angle shots are used on the gang to empower them, this introduces them to the audience as the villain of the story as they are portrayed in a menacing way.

An editing technique used during this opening scene was flash cuts, these were used at the start when the knife was being sharpened, they were used to cut back and forth between different shots and the knife shot, this back and forth cutting has a pacing affect which highlights to the audience the fast paced life of the favela, which in tur, amplifies the dangers of this life as it always flash cuts back to the knife being sharpened. The sheer amount of jump cuts used leaves that audience trying to process what is going on but they can’t, displaying to them how different life is and building tension due to the mystery of the later scenes.

Another editing technique used was a graphic match, it occurs when the boy is in between the gang members and the police officers during the gunfight, the camera pans around to a shot of him standing in the same body position as a child during a football match, this demonstrates the difficulties of living in the favela and suggests that it has always been like that and will always be like that, even for children, this unlocks feelings of sympathy among the audience. This technique also implements the idea of his life flashing before his eyes, which leaves the audience anxious to find out what is going to happen to him. As the only happened before an experience with death.

An eye-line match is also used in this scene where the camera does a close up of the boy looking away from the camera, in which the camera pans around to shows us that he is looking at the gang coming around the corner, time compression is used alongside this to build tension as the gang members slowly appear and walk out from behind the wall, it continues as the gang members hold their guns up and wave them around. This keeps he audience engaged as it keeps bringing about these feelings of fear for the boy’s life and also curiosity of what is going to happen.

A sound effect used during this sequence was parallel sound, this was used in the knife sharpening scene at the very start, however, it is clear the sound was heightened in post-production to emphasise the sound of the knife which also makes this pleonastic sound this amplifies danger and also creates feelings of fear in the audience as it gives the opening scene a more thrilling agenda.

Another sound effect used was music which was as equally fast paced as the flash cuts, this is diegetic sound as it originates from the film, and this makes it more relatable because you can see the people playing the instruments that are present in the music, this makes the audience believe what they are seeing is a very realistic representation of life in the favela, this gives the opening sequence a high verisimilitude.