Analyzing Avatars

[BipolarChemist]

I've realized that Zoraster's avatar bothers me.

It depicts one of the most famous scenes in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Now, where my issue comes into play is the use of ordering and the character set-up. Of course, his gif remains funny based on the shifting of eyes, but I strongly believe a stronger effect could have been had based on the scene given. Now, if we look at the characters, we're given The Good (Clint Eastwood), as well as the Ugly, then the Bad. Here are pictures of the film characters:

Here we can see that the establishing order was Good to Ugly to Bad in the gif.

Now we should be trying to understand the emotions within this scenes. The Ugly is frantic and slightly confused. The Good is trying to tell The Ugly that the Ugly does not have to worry. The real quarrel is between the Good and the Bad. Now, the Good actually emptied the Ugly's gun beforehand, so really the Ugly isn't even a factor.

So in my opinion, it would have been a better gif if it were The Good, then the Bad, the Ugly, then the Cat as an emphasis on Ugly's character's feelings. Which shouldn't be an issue to find that arrangement from the scene as the director was very creative with his shots here. Sergio Leone organized the scene in a very interesting way. It is literally just these three guys looking at each other, but what the director sought to do was give eye glances that both told a story between the characters and gave us their emotions, plus going through every permutation of the guys

6 sets of 3 shots
So it would cut from Good to Bad to Ugly
Then Good to Ugly to Bad
Then Ugly to Good to Bad etc etc
Here is more of a visual representation:

Spoiler:

(I know one of the 6 sets is missing here, but trust me that the Bad Ugly Good shot still exists!!!)[/align]

Now, this use of mathematical modelling towards establishing shots is something I find very very interesting!!! At the same time, I find that the best homage to the film would be sticking with the overt ordering that took place in the scene and mirroring the film's title. So on the basis of the Ugly character's emotions within the scene, and the ordering of the eye glance shots, I firmly believe that the order of shots in Zoraster's avatar should be:

The Good -> The Bad -> The Ugly -> The Cat

But now we have:

The Good -> The Ugly -> The Bad -> The Cat

It just ruins the effect for me, ya know?

[Thestatusquo]

No.

[lalaladucks]

but

[BROseidon]

Your tone seems very pointed right now

[zoraster]

While I'm excited my avatar finally got noticed.... I'm not sure how I feel about it being THIS noticed.

For me, the scene is all about the tension shown by the slowly increasing zoom as well as the music (if you don't hear it in your head even in The Good, The Bad, The Fuzzy gif you're dead inside). The order shown isn't that meaningful as the scene is actually quite a bit longer than just these cuts.

[Majiffy]

I find this analysis shallow and pedantic

[BipolarChemist]

The scene is heavily structured, with these sets of shots being a large focal point. The cuts between the characters set up so many important things that were built upon during the length of the film leading to this stand off.

The way each of the characters looks at the others describes how they are reading the situation. You can see Good looking to Ugly as if to say "Hey dude, it's alright, you're not my target", you can see Ugly trying to piece together the situation and trying to read what the other two are saying. The two you can clearly see come to an agreement with not a word being said. Bad is standing there, trying to understand the motives, slowly realizing the situation that's going to go down. Seeing the agreement between Ugly and Good. Bad becomes intent on Good, his eyeline directly at him, Good meeting the gaze, Ugly watching for Good's cue to shoot. UNTIL FINALLY it all comes to a head, rapidly switching between shots leading to the final result.

Now, the permutation shots were the first half of the scene, and then we see it move on to more dramatically heavy development shots. In this second part, he leads in by completing the previous permutations set with the B->U->G shot I mentioned in my first post. The camera shots focusing on Ugly and Good are actually perfectly equal, emphasizing that Good and Ugly are on the same playing field, where Bad is the one facing the real issue and receives the most camera shots. Of course these shots have MUCH more depth to them, but that's unimportant to my point!

Structure and organization was very important to Leone, emphasized in this scene. The order in which everything takes place was of utmost importance, man!

Edit: And yes of course Ennio Morricone's score was GORGEOUS here and the scene was an amazing blend of sound, imagery, and character development. To me, one of the most important aspects was this heavy organization though. That organization is what brought this scene from amazingly tense to one of the greatest scenes ever filmed, and why Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns are fucking classics. His attention to these details was what made this scene for me!

[zoraster]

I actually think the reason they changed the order for the gif is because the cat and the ugly have somewhat similar expressions and to put them together wouldn't have the same effect. It's like... calm, freaked out, calm, freaked out. Which is better than calm, calm, freaked out, freaked out.

[BipolarChemist]

Such an odd choice though! I would expect someone who was making a gif and knew anything about the movie, they'd put it in Good -> Bad -> Ugly order. Now of course, let's say they wanted a freaked out shot of Ugly, but the shot that's given isn't even really freaked out compared to other shots they could have chosen from! It feels more like they chose one of his calmest shots. So in a further analysis of the gif, well I just feel like characters are being misrepresented now!

[zoraster]

I think a slavish devotion to the original would detract from the actual effect intended: which is a funny juxtaposition of the cat with the movie scene.

[BipolarChemist]

Well this is of course down to personal opinion, where I'd rather see a truer representation of each character leading to a big joke reveal!

[zoraster]

What percent of the population do you believe values the true representation of characters of a movie known to most people almost entirely for that scene?

[BipolarChemist]

Much less than 1%!!! But how much of the population do you think is going to be effected even remotely by the change in the ordering of the glances??

I do actually think with the shots given, that if Ugly's shot was used before the cat, the direct stare into the camera would have a comedic effect still! I'm curious at the result of this, so I'm gonna go edit the gif and see what it looks like.

[zoraster]

probably a much large percent. Because you have to know something consciously to be affected by what you're talking about, but subconsciously the other have an effect.

Please do reorder it!

[BipolarChemist]

Well I assume a very small amount of the population has even seen the film. Now, I'll assume the population we're talking about is North America. I would hazard a guess that 2% of the population seeing this film is a high estimate, and even half of those people caring past "omg its a gif of that movie i liked" is small!

And yes, I'm whippin' out the ol' photoshop

[zoraster]

if you need the bigger one:

[BipolarChemist]

i've never actually edited a gif before! This is exciting stuff

[zoraster]

[zoraster]

no, the original is way better.

[BipolarChemist]

The matching eyelines seem to make my gif a bit softer. Notice Good look from centre to our left, then Bad from our right to our left, and finally Ugly finishing it off from far right to centre. I quite enjoy the continuity! But the scattered nature of yours seems to have the greater effect in the end!

Well met!

if anything i got to talk about an awesome scene and learn how to make gifs!~

[BipolarChemist]

Now I'm just playing with the delays to see if there can be any given dramatic effect!

[Untrod Tripod]

Humor comes in threes. Four is stretching.

Regardless, zor's was better than the edit imo.

[BipolarChemist]

So if we make the reveal on the third shot and entirely remove someone then we get:



edit: i think this is my fave one

[hiplop]

should be the good -> the bad -> the kat

[BipolarChemist]

That's the one I just made, hippy!!!!