Straight character shots lack character.

They will, Chrisy, that is the problem. Post a pic of Leonides shouting "This is Sparta!", and it will go on. Pic of Jack Sparrow, same problem, and you can keep going with this.
I totally agree, put those shots in character uploads.

I agree with them00ch completely...after all there is a famous line: "Do not rate the movie. Rate the awesomeness of the snapshot." What's so awesome about a plain mugshot!?
@Asmodai, know exactly what you mean and i HATE that

Yes but then again, when you see a famous character's face and you don't know the movie, you can just take a stroll on imdb and find the title. Where's the fun in that? And when you say that "person connects the way a character appears in that specific scene with the whole movie" - if i don't know the movie that means nothing to me. We had the same problem in Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Holy Virtues - e.g. a mugshot with comment: his character is so greedy in this movie. Again if i don't know the movie i can't see that. If character have some expression like for instance http://whatthemovie.com/shot/68779, or there is some "twist" in the shot, well that's ok with me. And for the end I just like to say that there's no point having a character upload, which is a great feature in my opinion, if we upload character shots in NS. But that's just my opinion so...

@sunsetwalker : yeah. I don't have a problem with easy shots at all, like I said in my first post. A balance between hard and good shots is needed, we do not disagree on that point.

But this is what I'm talking about, (and I hate using an example and calling someone out like this - apologies Lennyart if you read this)



No challenge, nothing interesting about the shot. Does not belong in the quiz section, but would make an OK character shot. And this isn't the only one, there are at least 5 in NS at the moment, possibly more. I really wouldn't care if people wanted to post these shots, but the annoying thing is, they *often* make it to FF! People vote highly for them.

The example you posted is fine, the over the top expression and framing of the shot is fairly interesting (plus I have no idea what it is :) ). I guess I am really talking about headshots of famous actors instead of just character shots. Some character shots can be very interesting.

@freudianspud

It isn't all of a sudden, shots of characters faces have always been considered boring by many people right the way back to WTM1. It's one of the main reasons why the character section was added. It just seems to be on the increase again. There have been multiple threads about it before: eg: this one from June last year http://forum.whatthemovie.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=349&page=1 . So its not a new thing all of a sudden.

Don't know if anyone remembers, but a few weeks back someone posted a title shot of Alien Ressurection in FF using an AU, their reasoning being that it looked cool, and was from the directors cut or something, so looked different to normal. That may be true, and it did look cool, but it still had the words "ALIEN RESURRECTION" all over the shot. It was deleted, because there was nothing to solve, the answer was written on the shot. This is a quiz after all. Faceshots of famous actors from huge mainstream movies aren't that much better.

This is all my own personal opinion, but I am sure I'm not the only one to feel this way, even if I am the only one vocalising it. I also would hardly call this an "uproar" ; a rant by me maybe ;)

No-one has any need to be concerned with anything! :) No-one is breaking any rules by posting headshots

Well, David Caruso should be banned from movies anyways IMO. And television series.

If you want people not to vote for the awesomeness of the shot, maybe you should change the tooltip.
"Vote for the cleverness of the shot..." or something like that. Aragorn is awesome. I suggest you explain to the voters what is your particular definition of "awesome".
People will vote for pretty blueray shots from visually attractive movies because you told them to.

As for the characters section, I thought that's just for convenience, to give people more info about a movie. I see nothing wrong with having an easy but awesome character snapshot in FF and later assigning it to the character.

I second your rant mooch

a vulcan mind melt kind of thing?

@ Sika, rating your shots on visual awesomeness is exactly what is "expected."

I have to agree with themooch and pspan. If it's just headshot of an actor, i also give the still a 1. A 2 as max.
I think it's kind of a shame to let the face shots go through, and let a (in my opinion ofcourse) better shot get rejected, just because it's harder.
Nothing wrong with easy stills, but after seeing the 50th JDepp shot, i get kinda tired of him. Be it as Jack Sparrow, or any other character.

The site seems to be extremely slow today, anyone else got that?

The problem with a game like this is that you won't be able to appeal to everyone all the time. For more casual players it's nice to have some character shots which they can solve. Other people think shots with some obscure detail are amazing shots.

It all depends.. as I've read here for more mainstream movies try and pick a more difficult shot, for lesser known movies pick an easier one.

Complaining generally won't solve anything unless all we get are boring shots.. but if that were the case people would stop playing. And we're all still here.

Dear Them00ch and others,

I agree with you on the fact that 'boring' character shots are no good and don't add anything to the quiz-value of WTM. Anyhow, IMO, these shots can not be banned by adding a 'character section', just because a (more) tedious debate will arise on the definition of a 'character shot'. (Ok, about -for example- the shot of Aragorn, there is no point to be made...) Personally, I think that some characters really define a movie. Yes, we do not 'need' more shots of Beatrix Kiddo, Neo or Gandalf, but if you want to add a character section, every shot with a person in it can be added to this section, also the 'better' ones.
With the 'better' ones, I mean the ones with a 'twist' or something to it, something different that depicts the movie.

I agree with Freudianspud on this point: sometimes a mugshot is cool because of the great acting, the great moment, a joke or even a complete 'style' of movie-making. (Look at 'Once upon a time in the West': most of the 'ordinary' Wild West scenery I find dull, but the fullscreen mugshots, for me, really depict the movie and I think they're awesome... Not ten of them, but still... ;))

Sometimes a shot just isn't that cinematic interesting, but yet I vote highly for it, because of the 'background': the submitter really thought about the 'moment' and that's what makes the shot 'cool'. Off course, this is easier for movies you have seen. (I mean, if you've seen the movie, you can't 'unsee' it ;)) The others I try to vote for in terms of 'spoilers','dullness' or 'awesomeness' but almost never on 'easyness', rather on simple-minded 'do-I-like-the-picture'. I think that's the way to vote; in this way, I would give the Aragorn shot a 5 or 6/10 maybe, just because I like his expression, but the shot could use something 'more'.

To conclude: yes, Them00ch, maybe these shots are too easy, therefore boring and could be added to a different section, but no, I really don't think that would solve the problem and also these shots aren't all that bad. (Otherwise we could also start discussions on the 100th Shrek-shot and things like that.) Just vote 1/10 if you think it's a real stupid shot (yes, the alien ressurection-thing :P) and leave the others be. I think there's a nice balance between easy and hard shots.
'Tricky' shots are always a lot nicer, but well, we can't have everything, so just leave it and let it balance out itself. (Agreed, LordMyst)

You have nailed my feelings exactly Zythux. I don't mind easy shots, in fact I have been a defender of them on many occasions http://whatthemovie.com/shot/28525 . However they have to be interesting to look at.

All of the 2nd section you posted Zythux are fine by me, they have something about them. The first section are dull dull dull, with possible exception of

Easy shot = fine
easy AND boring faceshot should be a characte shot.

That being said, I have had my rant now, I feel better getting this off my chest even if people disagree :)

Ah yes, you're right about that one. I checked some blockbuster movies for possible examples and forgot about that series, I'll take it out ;)

"dump all your bad quality character shots "?? Wow what a nice respect you are showing for people who - took a shot, uploaded it and contribueted to the site. I'm done uploading anything and I'm deleting my reviews. feel free to say I dumped rest of the shots you didn't deleted yet, please! :D

are you saying New Moon is not yet on Dvd? Because if you are saying this....they released it a week ago, I think.
You didn't need to use phrase 'dump', but if that's how you talk, well, it's not my place to teach you manners. Anyways, since clearly my shots are not good enough for you, I think this site is not good enough for my reviews. I'm gonna stick to solving now.

"pretty sure of" - well I hope you are pretty sure of many things 'cause this will get you far.
end of story indeed, bye bye.

I may be out of line cause this is not my discussion, but for god sake @sati, show a little respect. Rules apply to everyone, and you are not exception. We all get frustrated from time to time but this...and you are only 2 months on wtm. Now that being said, i'm satisfied

hear hear

I've noticed that repeating thing as well, there's a couple of movies that seem to show up more than others, PotC and LotR bwing two of the most obvious examples. Gave me an idea, I'll post it in the suggestion thread.

good for you, great to hear!

One thing I don't get is why people have to write stuff like "Boring", "is character shot, should be deleted from vault", "hate this shot", "ugh another one of these" and stuff like that on shots they don't like. (The reason I post it here is that lately I have seen a lot of these on character shoots).

I think it's okay not to like a shoot, but I don't go and write these kind of things on shoots that I don't think are that good. Instead I give them a low rating and I move on to the next shoot.
It's not a big problem, but sometimes when you think you have uploaded a great snapshot and all you get is negative comments on the shoot, it kind of spoil the fun of uploading snapshots.
The way I see it is we all upload shoots that we personally think is good and that they (maybe) "mean" something to us as individuals.

My personal rule is "Do I have something positive to say, I say it to everybody. Do I have something negative to say, I keep it to my self"

I understand that the majority here would like the Character shoots to be added to the character page instead, but how many of us do browse around in the character section on a daily basis? So my point it that fewer people would see the shoot.

But I will try and post (most of) my character shoots on the character page from now on. :-)

@ZomBeeBob
That's basically my rule as well. Keep quiet if you ain't got anything useful to say.

As for the repeated shots, it's not that I mind shots from the same film every once in a while, but like it is with Pirates for example, they're not always as creative. After having seen twelve different angles of Jack Sparrow, it kind of gets old. Same for Aragorn, Harry Pitter, etc. That's basically what I meant.