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Saturday, July 18, 2009

Confidence, Cockiness, Enthuasiasm, Self-Promotion?



In the recent podcast TheViewZ, episode 2, there was a discussion about confidence versus cockiness. The thought has been playing around in my mind since I listened to it.

Both extremes to me can be obnoxious and seem self-serving. There are people who are almost apologetic about their machinima work and there are people who seem to expect others to thank them for the honor of watching their movies. And all throughout the middle are multiple categories and styles and personalities.

The question is, do we really know how we are coming across? Is our enthusiasm for our own work coming across as obnoxious self-accolades? Is pointing out our technical flaws and creative failings being viewed as pleas for compliments? Are the methods we use for self-promotion actually pushing people away from our work?

2 comments:

Overman said...

Wow, I thought for sure this would start up some comments.

I think there are people at either extreme, those who promote their machinima with obnoxious superlatives, and others who masochistically downplay their own work. Both those extremes of behavior can harm the reception of a person's film.

I do think, however, that people who live in those extremes are vastly outnumbered by people who approach things pretty sensibly, who have enough confidence to show excitement over their own work but don't feel the need for hyperbole in expressing that. Probably the more common case is one where people have a great deal of confidence within their comfort zone community (whichever it is), but are agoraphobic about making efforts to get their work seen outside those walls.

Issmir said...

As far as I'm concerned, there are virtually no problems that cannot be overcome with a sufficiently large ego.

Ves

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