Genre Research: The Wolf of Wall Street

The movie that I chose to watch was The Wolf of Wall Street. This movie has very famous actors including Leonardo Dicaprio, Matthew McConaughey, and Margo Robbie. The movie focuses on Jordan Belfort, who is focused on by the FBI due to his empire of success, which he got by defrauding wealthy investors out of millions of dollars. He and his friends live life going to parties, having sex, and doing drugs. Like many movies, the camera angles, movements, sound, mise en scene, and more were thought about heavily, affecting movie quality. This movie is out under the crime genre. It follows a lot of the conventions, making it similar to other crime movies. It does have a lot of different qualities, which separates this movie from others. The common movements that were used was the zoom ins/outs, the tracking shot, and the tilt. They used a lot of different camera angles like the establishing shots, mid-shot, long shot, and over the shoulder shot. They also used close ups, 2 and 3 shots, and high angles.

The CLAMPS of a movie are the mise en scene that is used. It stands for costumes, lighting, actors, makeup, props, and sound. The costumes in this movie are tuxedos/fancy clothes because they're business people. They also wear boat/rich people clothes that they wear while they're chilling around/on a boat. This fashion is commonly worn on fraternity boys. The lighting in the movie is bright/outside lighting, usually. It also has building lighting, while they’re in the office and night time/darker lighting. The actors are usually serious and they act tough, but they do make occasional funny comments. The actors are also brilliant because they are businessmen dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars. The makeup, like most crime movies, is natural/as if they aren't wearing any. Common props in this movie include money, cars, boats, phones, and watches. Since they are rich, they tended to have items commonly associated with rich people. The sound in this movie includes the dialogue, the songs played at the parties, and the songs that are background noise (non-diegetic sound). There’s also a lot of ambient sounds like cars in the background.

There was a lot of different editing techniques used in this movie. These include jump cuts and cross cutting. The movie also had action and graphic matches and cutaways. Like said above, the movie followed a lot of its genres conventions. This included the props like money, the high angles, and the tracking shots. An element of the movie I really liked was watching them live such extravagant lives. It felt like you were living with them and you were part of their action. I didn’t like the parts of the movie that weren’t action or tension filled. They were necessary, but they felt boring. This is, of course, a part of every movie, though. Other than that, this movie was fantastic and definitely fit the crime genre in many aspects but also challenged the conventions in ways, too.