Film Analysis: The Big Short

Film Analysis Paper
The film that I watched was The Big Short. The explicit meaning of The Big Short is that it follows 3 groups of investors who have found a major problem in the United States Housing Market and they take their new-found information and try to invest in their best interest. By doing this they appear crazy and go against the odds for two years and discover the terrible truth that one day our housing economy would fall apart.
I think that the implicit meaning of The Big Short is everything is not always as it seems because each group of investors thought one way, the banks thought another, and the brokers who worked for the banks were unknowingly destroying their own business and essentially our economy in the process of them

making money in a way that cheated the system. There could be an additional implicit meaning of trusting your gut because the first investor to discover the “bubble” in the housing market and who also predicted it to happen in 2007 was told by his boss to pull the investments when the opposite was happening. Had he pulled the investments then the business would not have profited the amazing amount.
The diegetic elements of The Big Short include narration by multiple characters and dialogue as well as the diegetic environmental sounds.

One could also argue that the short educational videos filmed with celebrates to explain important terms were also diegetic because they were explaining necessary terms and without that explanation the audience may not have been able to fully understands the story. However, because the celebrities were in their homes, in casinos, or other random places to explain these terms they were not in the same location as the story or characters within the story and most importantly the characters in the story were not aware of the explanations happening. This would make them

nondiegetic.
The Big Short had several nondiegetic elements. This includes the celebrity definition videos. Other non-diegetic elements included the opening credits and opening score, the “based on a true story” frame, and a poem by mark twain over a rather unrelated picture. There were a few other instances of poems being shown in frame. There was a non-diegetic graph at three minutes, a flash of non-diegetic images related to housing and a News broadcast video being played back. There was also the movie title, character name titles on screen, time stamps on screen, the throat diagram on screen, and written definitions on screen. The musical score throughout is of course non-diegetic and this also includes the use of music videos and other videos and their songs being played in montages with narration. The final non-diegetic elements are the ending credits and the photos that accompany them.
The Big Short’s story includes all the diegetic elements from the food the investors ate to the heavy metal music Christian Bale’s character listened to.

This also includes the implied events such as the mortgages loans sold by the shifty mortgage brokers that we didn’t see happen but they did.
The Big Short’s plot includes everything I saw and heard from beginning credits to ending credits, but it does not include implied events such as the work done by the shifty mortgage brokers.
One element of design in The Big Short is setting and I thought the cinematographers did a great job at making the audience feel like you were in the big hub-bub of wall street because of the constant use of cabs by the charters and the highly populated big city in the background. When the characters traveled, they did a great job at making a famous city, like Las Vegas, recognizable. We were shown the casinos, the city scape, and a large convention

center.
One example of composition in The Big Short is kinesis. There was an immense amount of kinesis throughout the film. In city scenes, there were so many people and cars and background movement it was almost distracting. I think this was done to make show the audience how all the movement could be distracting for the characters in their daily lives. Due to the large number of characters in each scene there was also a lot more movement because there was more people per frame. The photo and video montages during times of narration with no story film being played were filled with rapid movement. The images moved so quickly it was overwhelming and it was difficult to differentiate between the images. I think that this was done to show important viewpoints or concepts in a very short amount of time.
One aspect of lighting in The Big Short was its source which seemed very natural because a lot of the scenes were either outside or in rooms with very large windows creating that bright sunlight look. This was throughout the majority of the movie aside from a view scenes for example in the dark casino when the two investment groups were in Las Vegas.
One short type I noticed while watching this film was a close-up shot on Christian Bale’s character. It was just after he had made all his investments against the housing market and he was checking his email. The frame showed his inbox full of e-mail calling him crazy and then the close-up shot was on his face to show us his response. One shooting angle was a high-angle shot on Steve Carrell’s character, Mark, getting out of the cab while on the phone with his wife.
One example of continuity editing in The Big Short was the shot/reverse shot technique to film conversations between characters. One specific example is in the casino restaurant when Mark and the major business bad guy were eating and discussing the synthetic CDO’s. The technique shot/reverse shot was used to show their conversation. An example of discontinuity editing was the use of the freeze frame in the very beginning of the film when the characters were being introduced. At the time, Ryan Gosling was the narrator and as he said each person’s name the audience would see a moving image of them and then it would suddenly freeze and their name would pop up on screen.
One source of sound in The Big Short was the non-diegetic musical score. This includes the typewriter key sounds when words would come on screen. Also, camera clicking noises during the montage of photos and music during music videos shown and voices during video clips in between scenes. These are on-screen sounds. One type of sound is the vocal dialogue and narration by multiple characters One function of sound shown in the Big Short is continuity because over lapping sounds of city scenes were used throughout the movie constantly and even during switches to scenes. The musical score was also upbeat and fast for the majority which matched the fast paced life of an investment banker and it kept me as a viewer awake and interested from scene to scene.