Every artist getting their first significant funding faces the same panic: now you have to actually make good on the promises of your proposal, the budget that looked generous suddenly feels impossibly small, and you're supposed to believe in your work enough to ask strangers for help while also staying humble. For filmmakers, the funding often means stepping from supporting roles into the lead, a whole crew to recruit and care for, and bringing a story they hold dear through the trenches of production.
At Day One Shorts' 2026 filmmaker hui on 30th of January at The Rosey Screen Production Base in Avondale, seven alumni who have already delivered funded short films sat down with the incoming cohort, who have received $15,000 for documentaries or $20,000 for scripted to create a short film. What the alumni shared wasn't the polished advice you'd get from a mentor or funder – it was specific, and grounded in (sometimes harsh) reality. I was there with pen and paper to jot down what I could of the hard-won knowledge. Here’s what I heard.
“Leave the Self Deprecating Humour at Home”
Writer and Producer of scripted short Lemons, Caitlin Fremaux highlights the importance of visibly believing in your project. "You really need to believe in your story,” she said, “You've got people working for very little – if they hear you jokingly slagging off your own film, what are they even here for?"
Fremaux went on to tell the filmmakers they need to be their own number one fan and hype the crew up about how great the film is going to be. She challenged them to fight the kiwi urge to downplay it – “you need to really buy into yourself.”
Jennifer Onyeiwu, Producer of doco Detangling The Stigma agreed, adding that they shouldn't shortchange themselves when assembling their team. Even with a tight budget, if you pitch with confidence and genuine belief in what you're making, people will respond to that energy. "Not being afraid to shoot for the high name of someone that you're like 'oh, they'll say no' – it's like maybe they will, maybe they won't."
Have The Money Talk Up Top
"It sounds like so much money." Matilda Boese-Wong, producer of doco Gloss Finish said. "It was crazy seeing those numbers in a bank account and being like 'oh my God, everyone's gonna get luxuriated.'” But once it was budgeted all out, “it's really just not a lot”.
The advice was unanimous: always front-foot the money conversation before anyone joins your team. "Being upfront because money conversations are so hard – that was a really big challenge for me as a producer. It's scary, but it's better to preface it at the very beginning of the conversation and get it out of the way."
When you can't pay proper rates, and most emerging artists can't (even funded ones), you need to offer something else. What else can you offer? And how can you get your collaborators to buy into your vision? And crucially: feed them properly.
"Good catering goes so far. If you feed and coffee the crew well and have clear communication, they will love you. They're obviously not doing it for the money anyway." one of the incoming writer-directors Raphella Holder-Monk offered, having crewed on Day One Shorts before.
Be Brave Enough to Have Awkward Conversations
"Just be brave," Te Kohe Tuhaka, Producer of scripted short Devil in The Gat encouraged. "You're gonna have to have some f***ing awkward conversations. That's your job to produce. So you've got to produce an outcome, be it a negative or a positive."
Being fully committed to the director's vision sometimes means fighting for what the want, and sometimes delivering hard news. "I have no regrets around having come out of some of those conversations going 'the person's not available, we can't get that space.' But through those conversations and their bravery, the solution comes out of it."
Whether it's negotiating with a location, asking someone to step aside, or admitting you're struggling, the conversation only gets harder the more you avoid it.
Slow Is Fast
“Slow is fast” is Jennifer Onyeiwu’s go to phrase "Sometimes when you're on set, you think ' we need to go!' In that haste, things tend to slow down. But if you approach it with 'let's go slow, what do we need to hit? OK, let's flow through that' – you tend to move through things a lot faster."
When panic sets in, that's when you most need to pause. "You can tend to figure out what's a need, what's a want. But recognising that ethos of slow is fast – once you slow down, you can breathe, you can see what the roadmap is.”
Your Vision Will Change
When asked if there are big changes between the original concept and the finished product, Fremaux was blunt: "100%. Prepare yourself."
She described it as a dissonance you need to get over. When you first envision a project, you're working alone, but filmmaking is collaboration. "You get all these people that are smarter than you, more specialised than you, and they help you realise that your original idea is better for what they've added to it."
She acknowledged it can be unsettling – "it's gonna freak you out, but it will probably be better" - and it’s part of the learning process. This is about closing the gap between what you envision and what you can actually achieve, and every project is a stepping stone toward that.
Documentary filmmaker Shamin Yazdani described a different kind of evolution, finding focus in the edit. Her film, Frozen: My Eggs and Me about deciding whether or not to freeze her eggs had shot enough material for a feature, with many possible angles: environmental factors, socioeconomic considerations, personal history. Working with her editor, she realised she had a choice. "I could have touched on all these things and maybe not really delved into any of them in great length, or I could just commit to some of the talking points." She chose the most personal ones. "Because at the end of the day, we're all here because we have something to say, and that was my thing to say."
What Actually Matters
Taniora Ormsby, writer-director of Devil in The Gat, emphasised the importance of the team you assemble: "Make sure the people you're going to war with are the people that you really want to go to war with because once it's filmed, it's done. You can try your hardest to edit it to make sure it's the perfect film, but you've got what you've got."
The final piece of advice from Jennifer Onyeiwu; "Make the film you want to make. You can easily end up in a trap where you're performing for the masses and then you look back at your film and you're like 'oh, it's not really the thing.'"
Across the session, the alumni kept returning to these themes: clear communication, asking for help early, protecting your team's wellbeing, and believing in your work.
Your voice is why you got funded. Trust it. Feed your crew. Have the hard conversations early. Slow down when it matters. And leave the self-deprecating humour at home.
