When two or three people are about to draw their guns and you want to stretch out those few seconds when nobody moves, pushing the tension to its limit. It also works for a game showdown teaser, a sports face-off promo, or a parody that exaggerates a negotiation scene.
Put the three people very small in the middle of the circular cemetery, so you show the whole dueling ground first.
To recreate it: Be specific about the number and position of people, like 'three tiny figures in a vast circular plaza', so the AI doesn't draw in extra people.
The heart of a Leone standoff: only the eyes fill the widescreen frame, and sweat and gaze take the place of dialogue.
To recreate it: Use eye close-ups as locked-off shots under 2 seconds, and tell the AI to move only the pupils left and right.
A shot cut off at knee height that fits the face and the gun on the hip into one frame. Westerns use it so often that it got this name.
To recreate it: Include 'framed from mid-thigh up, holstered revolver visible'.
Inside a cemetery set that hundreds of Spanish soldiers built like a Roman amphitheater, the three men face each other in a triangle. Who is aiming at whom is clear from the layout alone.
To recreate it: Show where the three men stand once before you go into close-ups, so the eye shots that follow aren't confusing.
As the same eye and hand close-ups repeat, you can see the shots getting shorter and shorter, and that acceleration signals 'it's about to blow'.
To recreate it: Cut them in at 3 seconds, 2 seconds, 1 second, then 0.5 seconds.
The final standoff is built around the structure of the music running from 'The Ecstasy of Gold' to 'The Trio', and Leone cut almost all the dialogue from the duel.
To recreate it: Change shots on each strong beat of the music, and leave the one beat just before the draw silent.
It was shot in Techniscope, a wide landscape format, so a single face and the distant horizon fit in the same frame.
To recreate it: Generate at 2.39:1, or fit it with letterboxing in editing.
Cinematic multi-shot sequence, 13 seconds total. Shot 1 (3s): static extreme wide shot of three gunslingers standing in a triangle inside a circular desert graveyard plaza under a harsh noon sun. Shot 2 (3s): static cowboy shot of a lean gunslinger in a dusty long coat, hand hovering over his holstered revolver. Shot 3 (2s): locked-off extreme close-up of his squinting, sweating eyes. Shot 4 (1s): locked-off extreme close-up of a rival's narrowed eyes under a black hat brim. Shot 5 (1s): static insert of a gloved hand twitching above a holster. Shot 6 (3s): slow truck left as all three draw at once in a burst of dust. Consistent three gunslingers and positions, hard sunlight, sun-bleached widescreen film grain.
Leone is famous for a style that puts wide landscape shots right up against extreme close-ups filled with a face. In duel scenes he cut almost all the dialogue and left only the characters' actions. The final three-way standoff follows the structure of the music: it starts with 'The Ecstasy of Gold' and ends with 'The Trio', and you can see the shots of eyes and hands getting shorter as the music grows louder. The dueling ground, the Sad Hill Cemetery, is a set that hundreds of Spanish soldiers built like a Roman amphitheater, so you get the picture of three people standing in a triangle inside a circle.
Extreme wide shot of a vast circular stone plaza in a dusty desert graveyard ringed by wooden crosses, three tiny gunslingers standing far apart in a triangle, standing perfectly still. Static camera, harsh noon sun, sun-bleached widescreen 35mm film look.
Cowboy shot framed from mid-thigh up of a lean gunslinger in a dusty long coat, his right hand hovering above a holstered revolver, wind tugging at his coat. Static camera, hard overhead sunlight, sun-bleached widescreen film look, coarse grain.
Extreme close-up of the lean gunslinger's squinting eyes filling the widescreen frame, sweat running down his sunburned skin, eyes darting to the left. Locked-off camera, hard sunlight, sun-bleached colors, gritty 35mm film grain.
Extreme close-up of a second gunslinger's narrowed eyes beneath a black hat brim, a bead of sweat sliding down his temple, staring straight ahead. Locked-off camera, hard sunlight, sun-bleached widescreen film look, gritty grain.
Insert shot of a gloved hand twitching just above a holstered revolver at hip level, dust blowing across worn leather. Static camera, extreme detail, harsh noon sunlight, sun-bleached colors, 35mm film grain.
Wide shot across the stone plaza as all three gunslingers draw their revolvers in the same instant, dust bursting around their boots and coats flaring. Slow truck left, harsh noon sun, sun-bleached widescreen 35mm film look, explosive release.
Hold the first wide shot long to fix where the three men are. Then alternate close-ups of hands and eyes, making the shots shorter with each repeat. Drop the sound for the one beat right before the downbeat where the music is loudest, and from the end of that stillness cut to the wide shot of the draw (Shot 6).
The three characters tend to look alike, so first make a start frame for each one with a different hat, coat color, and beard, and use the same character image as a reference for the eye close-ups too. AI often smears the hand motion of drawing a gun, so show the moment of the draw only briefly in the wide shot, and ask the hand insert for nothing more than a small 'twitch'. Characters often start walking suddenly in standoff shots, so add 'standing perfectly still'.
Wikipedia — The Good, the Bad and the Ugly · Wikipedia — American shot (cowboy shot)