city of gods

City Of Gods

In the opening sequence of city of god we find out a few useful things about what is going to happen in the film. First of all we watch as a montage of shots is unveiled before us. This montage consists of numerous shots of a knife being sharpened and then it cuts to a series of shots of an old man playing a musical instrument. We then see that there is a large group of men preparing and cooking some chicken. At this point there is the diegetic music coming from the old man’s musical instrument but also there is the noise of the man’s laughter and excitement. The montage changes again and now cuts to the man cooking the chicken to a live chicken that is waiting to be slaughtered. As it looks on in fear we notice this chicken’s heart is racing because he obviously knows his terrible fate. The camera swings around and we are now presented with the chickens leg and to the string that is tied around his foot. The camera work and editing make clear that the string on its leg is coming undone using the camera to focus on the leg. The editing in this montage is very fast as there is a load of action going on here and its trying to build our heart rates up for what’s going to happen next. The chicken then escapes and then we are introduced to I’m guessing one of the main characters. The man then pulls a gun out and through this mise en scene we realise these men aren’t good men. As the chase begins more and more men start pulling guns out. As the chase goes on more people start joining the race to get the chicken back and bullets are now fired at the chicken. Throughout the sequence we see two camera shots feature very heavily one of them is a tracking shot where someone is tracking the chicken through the streets with a camera and the other is of an aerial shot, looking down on the chase as its going on
As the chase is going on we meet two young men walking down stairs in a city. The diegetic noise of the guns and music has now disappeared and has now being replaced by dialogue. To me this shows that these two are going to feature more in the film as they have speaking roles maybe these are the main characters or at the very least they must have very good roles to play in this film. The gang chasing the chicken then come out of an alley way looking for the chicken. The action is then slowed right down as the gang leader exits from the alley. At this point the whole action is slowed right down as the man takes centre stage in the street. The camera then switches to one of the new young men that came down the stairs. The camera spins around this man’s head from a low angle looking upwards. This gives us the impression that the man maybe important for one reason or another then camera then focuses on the gang again this time it’s a long shot of them all lined up in the street. The gang leader asks the young man if he would get the chicken for him. At this point as the man is trying to gather the chicken for the gang we notice that the young man has a camera around his neck. As the camera is using a shallow focus on the man we notice that a police car pulls up behind the camera man. Some of the gang members try to run off but are called back by the leader. The camera work then changes to a close up of the lone boy the camera then starts moving around the boy in a matrix style shot. This makes the audience feel for the boy as it shows he is caught in the firing line between the gang members and the police.
We then have a superimposition flash back where we are sent back to what looks to be a third world country where a boy is playing football and is in net. The camera circles the boy as the imposition is going on. We are then fully introduced to who the man is. A voice over then comes over the dialogue and he reveals who he is.