How does the director (Fernando Meirelles) use mise en scene to capture the audience’s attention in the opening of a film?
There are four major sections that make up the mise en scene of any film or short clip. The same applies for “City of God”.
PROPS: Although the clip is very short, we do see a lot of props that allow us to have an insight into the premise and ideology of the film. One prop in particular holds a lot of significance. This is the chicken.It has a lot of connotations of how the boy is desperately trying to get away from the mass gang members that litter that slums of Brazil and how sooner or later he will be “caught”, metaphorically speaking. It does also allow us to see the lifestyle in which many of the people live in, in these slums and gives us a great deal of contextual information that we would otherwise know nothing about. Another prop that is shown that allows us some context into what the film is about is the gun. This allows us to see that their is a high crime rate and there is a lot of violence that associates itself with this setting.
SETTING:The setting as a whole portrays a sense of poverty and this contributes to the overall atmosphere that the clip italicizes. It allows us to see how street life in Brazil, in the slums, is like and how it affects the people that live there. This is crucial as the film mostly focuses around how these people live and how their lives differ from our own.
COSTUME: The costumes also plays a major part in how the opening is received as it shows the financial state that the people live in. We see a lot of grubby and grimy clothing that many of the people wear. This, again shows their struggling financial situations and allows us to see how they live their lives and the difficulties that have to overcome.
LIGHTING: The lighting throughout the clip is very low key. The director does this to show how “dark” and almost “hopeless” a place like the slums can be and this emphasizes the bad situation that many of the people living in these conditions face.
This opening clip is extremely important to show how the rest of the film will unfold and is a major factor to lay out the basic themes that will run throughout the film. The mise en scene (including these four areas) allow a greater perception into the film and how it will later play out.
AS media; Jade 