Crippling Self Doubt
Hello world! Hope everyone is doing well, (is anyone actually there?) yesterday I finally posted my first music video as part of the YouTube reboot and lets just say, it was a doozy!
Some of you know I have moved out of my apartment and into my house with my fiance and the video I posted yesterday was a trial-and-error attempt at figuring out where my green screen would live in my new office. I learned a ton about where the camera and the lights would need to be and the different challenges of the room, but I managed to release FIVE videos last week all filmed in the new space.
When it came time to edit this video, that's where things got a little... well, depressing. Many of you know I film and create all my videos entirely by myself. No crew, no editor, no makeup artist, none of that. All me. And lets just say that my abilities with costuming are not the most well funded or professional looking.
Basically as I was editing the video, I kept finding things wrong with my body, my face, my hair, everything. I got so afraid that the cosmetic issues of the characters I was trying to portray would get in the way of the video itself. I am really proud of the track and of the hard work it took to edit this video and manipulate the chroma key backgrounds, but I felt like since I didn't always look the part, people were going to just take it at face value.
So I started brainstorming with my fiance. "Should I put a disclaimer about cost?" "Should I apologize for my wigs being cheap?" "Should I just not post it at all?"
All of these things were running through my head and I was getting crippled by the fear of being judged.
If you are an artist, I think you can understand this. We all go through this cycle with our work. This really great, fantastic idea starts happening and everything is awesome but then we start being super critical and get disappointed in ourselves until we decide "f*** it" and either trash the whole thing or fling it out into the world to see if it sticks.
I chose the second option.
After monkeying around with the effects, I finally found something that did an OK job at hiding the flaws and then thought "just post it and see what happens".
And as usual, I was pleasantly surprised.
Now of course this video didn't go viral or anything like that but the immediate feedback I got on it was great! People didn't notice the flaws that I did, they were entertained, everything seems good!
Now of course only time will tell, but going forward I will carry this experience with me. I need to remember that getting my work out there is more important than it attaining my unrealistic level of "perfect". I have so much I want to share with the world and right now, I'm the only one on my team so it has to be me who does the work and crosses my fingers that people will see my vision and love it as much as I do (or maybe like a fraction of that haha).
Until then, I'll learn to accept my fears and push past them. It is so worth it in the end.
Enjoy the video!
