Most of us don't have the luxury of screening our work for a captive audience in a large dark theater. Increasingly, home theaters, desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones are the avenues through which our creations will be seen. Setting the obvious technical differences aside, these venues and devices have their own unique set of demands. None more important, perhaps, than cultivating an audience's trust.

Think about it. When you go and see a movie in a theater, you've already invested time, money, and energy just getting yourself into the seat. Then there's the whole darkened movie theater thing. It's a lot harder to walk out of a theater than it is to thumb the remote, flick your mouse, or turn off your cellphone.

So how do you earn trust? Get yourself right. Keep yourself in humble service to the story or the idea. Honor your audience by not wasting their time. I don't know about you, but the second I feel like my time and energy isn't respected, like I'm just a cheap pair of eyeballs, I'm out.

There are tens, hundreds of little decisions that go into creating a music video, a short film, an animated GIF. And each one of them is an opportunity to either alienate or captivate your audience. Yes, worry about the technical stuff - the lighting, the edit, the sound design. But never lose touch with the fact that you are asking for people to surrender their time and attention to watch what you've made. That's an honor, not a right.