In the film 'City of God' Fernano Meirelles uses many cinematic techniques to make the audience take on a certain point of view towards certain characters and key events.
Starting straight away with the opening scene, the first thing you see is a knife, this straight gives the audience an idea of the area this film is set. The editing in the opening scene is very fast paced, swapping from clip to clip of knives, chickens, people, stoves, etc, this gives the audience the ideology that this place is very fast paced.
Lil' Dice/Lil' Z is often shown as very powerful and dominant, for example when Lil' Dice goes into the building with a gun in which his brother and friends had robbed and trashed, and killed them all, his performance as a character shows how much of a conscience he lacks, with the fact he just laughs psychotically, however, with the use of cinematic techniques, we see that with this psychotic side he is, he is very powerful, this is emphasised with the usage of often low camera angles, this angle also emphasises the gun in his hand.
Whenever a character has a gun, in terms of framing and camera angles, the gun is very much emphasised, like when Steak N' Fries is told to shoot the small child, we switch to a point of view shot with the gun in the centre of the frame, this is done purposely to show that whoever has the gun in the situation or event, has the power, so at this point Lil' Ze and his gang all have the power, because they have the gun, this is once again emphasised with the usage of low angle shots.
