382 CHAPTER 8EDITING
another part of the neighborhood. In between,
there is a great deal of the gang’s frenzied running
after the bird. The cinematography includes over-
head shots that show the area in which the chase is
taking place, moving shots from a handheld camera
as the gang (and the camera operators) run
through the streets, and ground-level shots from
the chicken’s point of view. Since the chicken is run-
ning through a maze of lanes and alleyways, the
director uses middle and long shots (some of them
high angle) to give us a wider perspective on the
chase and to verify the forward movement of its
direction. The bird is running for its life, and the cam-
era work and editing make sure we don’t forget that.
The continuity editing makes all this action coherent.
The editor now cuts away from the chase (an
editing convention as old as the movies themselves)
to introduce Rocket and begin a sequence of paral-
lel action, cutting between Rocket and Li’l Zé.
Unaware of the chase, Rocket and a friend are
strolling through the area. Rocket says that he’ll
risk his life to get a good photograph; although we
wonder what he means, we later learn that he is
interested equally in the drug dealers, the armed
children, and the corrupt police. He hopes that by
getting photographs of any of them, he could get a
good job at a newspaper. This is a comparatively
calm moment in which the camera remains station-
ary in a long take. The editor now cuts back to Li’l
Zé and the chase. His gang has only one thing on its
mind—to obey the order to get the chicken—and as
they rampage through the streets, they use their
guns to threaten anyone in their path. Li’l Zé pulls
his gun on a street vendor but does not shoot. Sud-(^45)
6
City of God: editing in Part 2, “The Chase” This part
of the scene begins with a shot of the chicken running
through the streets [4], probably taken with a Steadicam
from a ground-level point of view; the cut is to a low-angle
shot of the armed gang running after the bird [5]: the editor
then cuts to another shot of the chicken, ahead of its
pursuers [6]. Not just in these three shots, but throughout
this part of the sequence, the continuity cutting, going back
and forth between shots of the chicken and of its pursuers,
maintains screen direction from shot to shot. Although pace
of the editing here remains rapid, to convey the urgency of
the pursuit, it is not as rapid as the cutting of “The
Preparation.” However, this is not traditional continuity
cutting, because—like the chase sequences in the movies
that make up the Bournecycle (2002–7)—it’s highly
fragmented and contains many otherwise jarring spatial
leaps that do not stress a smooth flow from one shot to the
next. Yet we accept it as one continuous, coherent action.