I’ve always been a bit nervous when it comes to feedback and criticism. I think this is for one main reason: I used to be painfully shy and I still have parts of me that are afraid of what others think. I try to make everyone happy and I tend to overthink things, which is a deadly combination (in social situations, at least). This led to me becoming afraid to give anyone any feedback that is not “awesome!” and “perfect!” and “you’re a freaking genius!” It was a while before I realized that I, personally, appreciated constructive feedback more than empty comments. This is true even if the comment isn’t necessarily praising my work. It was another while before I felt comfortable applying what I had discovered in my own feedback. Sometimes, even when I think I’ve done my best work, I can sense that it is missing something. Only when somebody points this out to me can I fix it. I want my work to be the best that it can be, and other people’s reactions and advice is crucial in this endeavor. I only hope that I can provide an equally efficient resource for them in return.
From the reading, I learned that there is no good use in being torn down. I already knew this, I suppose, but I tend to assume that if a person is critiquing something that I’ve made it makes their opinion valid. This is not always true. Unfortunately, there are rude people in the world who would like nothing more than to merely degrade others in a pathetic attempt to make themselves feel better. Perhaps ironically, my opinion may not be valid here, but I believe that one should ignore such people. It’s good to get suggestions, but if somebody is a real friend (or even a remotely nice person) their feedback will be polite, considerate, and constructive.
I think that it is important to receive feedback from more than one person. Anne Lomott may disagree with me on this, but it is something I thought of during class yesterday. One person’s reaction probably won’t be a good implication of how successful your work will be. I can pitch an idea to my mom (who’s biased to begin with) and she might love it or hate it, but that says almost nothing about what the rest of the class (or the world) is going to think. It’s important to get a variety of opinions, preferably from people you trust. It may not be a good idea to get a first opinion from a large group of random strangers, because groups like these have been known to turn into angry mobs. And everyone knows that an angry mob doesn’t care about whether your writing/idea/film/whatever is any good or not.
I enjoyed reading your blog entry, because it seems to touch on many of the important points of feedback. Feedback can be scary, but very helpful to the individual/artist so that they can know what they can improve. Yes it is true that you can't please everyone. When we talked about the hunger games in tma 114 I said that I absolutely loved it and really thought that the filmmakers did a great job, but there were some who did not like certain aspects of the film. Everyone has a difference opinion and I do think that the more people you invite to watch or view you art you will start to notice that there are some artistic traits in your artwork that most people did like. However, there will always be that one small group of people who are never satisfied and thrive on the faults of others. I Think that asking relatives to view your artwork can be good, but I would suggest that most of your audience be selected from people who may not know you very well. This way you can escape the biased opinion. When you ask people who don't know you very well they don't know your film history and have a completely open mind about what they are about to see. It's like any movie shown in theaters, the best feedback is from those who don't know the director which is thousands of people. Also in the scientific method it says in order for the results of an experiment hypothesis to be consider fact there has to be a large test group. Therefore the more people you invite the better and more accurate the result will be.
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