Shorts Don’t Need To Be Perfect

When you’re making your first film, it’s easy to feel like it has to be perfect. The perfect script. The perfect performances. The perfect camera moves. But one of the best pieces of advice we can give new filmmakers is this: your first film should be short, not perfect.

Short films get finished

The biggest advantage of a short film is that it actually gets made. Smaller runtimes mean fewer shooting days, fewer locations, and fewer chances for momentum to stall out. A finished five-minute film teaches you far more than an unfinished twenty-minute one ever will.

Perfection sucks

Chasing perfection often leads to endless rewrites, reshoots, and second-guessing. For first-time filmmakers, that pursuit can quietly kill progress. Film is a collaborative, moving target—waiting until everything feels flawless usually means waiting forever. Momentum matters more than polish early on.

Short films create real learning wins

Every finished film gives you feedback you can’t get on the page. You learn how actors interpret your writing, how sound impacts emotion, how pacing actually feels on screen, and where your instincts were right or wrong. Short films let you cycle through that learning process faster, which is exactly what early filmmakers need.

Festivals reward clarity

At festivals like the Utah International Film Festival, we’re not impressed by runtime—we’re impressed by confidence and clarity. A tight, well-executed short film often lands better with audiences than a longer film that stretches beyond its strengths. Knowing when to cut and when to end is part of the craft.

Your first film is a starting point, not the finish line

Your first film doesn’t need to define you as a filmmaker. It just needs to exist. Think of it as a calling card, not a manifesto. Every filmmaker you admire started somewhere, and very few of their early projects were perfect—but they were finished.

A short film that’s done will always be more valuable than a perfect film that never leaves your hard drive. Finish something. Share it. Learn from it. Then make the next one a little better. That’s how real filmmaking careers are built.