Criticism is good, Plain Negativity is not.

Constructive Criticism is one of the greatest things a filmmaker could ask for, as it would for any type of artist.
At times, when you are working on something for so long and hard, you don't know how to see its from an objective view point. Trying to make none biased judgements on it so you can improve it can become difficult. Or even some people can spot things you would have never been able to spot. Thats where the constructive criticism comes in.

Constructive criticism is essentially the objective judgement of both its merits and faults with no biased opinions thrown into the mix of the final verdict. An example of this would be a film review.

Film reviews themselves have to be completely objective and judge a productions merits and faults so they can decide for people whether a film is worth seeing or not. They can't be saying "This film is amazing because Arnold Schwarzenegger is in it." They can say he perhaps performed quite well in a certain film, but they cannot use their own personal preference or opinion unless it adds to the review.

Every time I am going to upload a video, I always show to a friend or a relative to help get a preliminary opinion on the video before it goes up. Quite usually this helps me smooth out some of the more visible flaws and really helps with the quality of the video.

The whole point of criticism is to point out the pros and cons of a work and doing this can help you really improve a piece. This kind of review can take out the flaws within a piece and also give you a look at how people could react to production. This goes for loads of areas of work too!

Not reviewing your work
"Can you mark my english paper?"
"Sure!"
*couple minutes later*
"How did I-"
"FAAAAIILLL!"

Reviewing your work
"Can you mark my english paper please?"
"Sure!"
*couple minutes later*
"How did I do?"
"PASS!"

SUCCESS!!!!!! 

With constructive criticism, there will always be comments on its faults. This can be irritating for some people for different reasons. It could be that they have worked so hard on this project that the mention of any faults simply angers them of their own fault or that someone spotted it. It could also be that perhaps the viewer himself thinks its perfect and is arrogant, or it could be perhaps for another reason. But the big part to this type of criticism is that people explain why they feel this way. That is the difference between criticism and just plain negativity.

What I mean by just plain negativity is someone just plainly giving an opinion without a supporting argument to why they feel this way. There can be cases where someone perhaps doesn't like something and don't know why, however I am a believe that in order to do something, we humans have to have a reason behind it.

I eat because I'm hungry, I play games because I'm bored, I breathe because I WANT TO LIIIVVVE!

But there are comments (especially in the youtube comment sections) where someone says something is bad and just leave it there. I'll give you an example.
A long while back I made a video called "Final Fantasy Battle Real Life" (it is kinda bad, so beware)
Here is a link if you are interested: http://youtu.be/mH7ZRYiKWJY

On that video there were quite a few flaws, but despite that I got a few positive comments, which I was thankful for. After all I had worked hard on that video to try and recreate this well known Final Fantasy battle structure.
However there were also comments that were rather blatant.

Now I will be honest here, this comment did hurt a little.

I mean, just out of no where, this guys comes along watches my video and decides to type in such a negative comment.
But what bugged me more is that he didn't explain why he didn't like it.

I'll admit, the video was lacking in quality in quite a few areas, but leaving at least a reason why he didn't like it, or an example of what he didn't like would have helped out a lot more and allowed me to improve.


But this is a very common thing to happen on people on the internet, so much so if people don't like what they see, it can open people up to personal attacks about their appearance, financial status, sexuality, etc... Thankfully, personal attacks on the comments have never happened to me, but they have to people I know. Even if you try to ignore them, it still hurts.

I don't think people should sugarcoat anything they didn't like about the videos they watch. I mean, the internet is one of the most honest places in the world. Because of the fact people are anonymous, people can be as truthful as they want because they don't have to save face.
However I do believe that there is a certain level of curtsy when writing these opinions could help people improve rather than put them down.

Sorry, I'm kinda going into a rant now.


But in any case, I would say one thing to anyone who is trying to make their own content, give your work to someone you know when you are finished and get them to review it. The feedback that they give you can really improve your work.

And try to ignore the blatant negative comments. If you enjoy it and it isn't harming anyone, then go ahead and make it. Now, I think you know what time it is.....

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RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!!

P.S. Filming at a small short today. If you are good, I may share some behind the scene with you :-)