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Why Volume Beats Perfection—And How Indie Filmmakers Can Build a Sustainable Career One Movie at a Time

I've been on a bit of a soap box the past couple of weeks, admittedly.

It's because I’ve got a confession: for years I chased the “perfect” film. You know, the One: waiting for the right pieces, circumstances, people, etc. for the perfect movie that would launch my career like a rocket. I polished scripts until they fell apart, waited for ideal conditions (spoiler: they never came), and treated my first project like it had to be my Citizen Kane. And guess what? That obsession with perfection got me a whole lot of nothing. It’s like standing at the edge of a pool, toe in the water, waiting for it to be the perfect temperature.

Meanwhile, other filmmakers have done cannonballs, making movie after movie, learning, earning, and having a blast. Eventually I learned a hard truth: in this game, volume beats perfection. If you want a sustainable career, you’re better off making many pretty good films than holding out for one flawless gem. Let me explain.

The Perfection Trap vs. The Volume Strategy

As indie filmmakers, we tend to romanticize the Perfection Trap. We’ve all heard the stories of auteurs who spend 15 years on a passion project. That can work for a select few, but for most of us it’s a trap. I liken it to trying to bake the perfect cake without ever cracking an egg because you’re reading recipe books endlessly. Eventually you realize you’d have been better off baking 10 decent cakes and learning from each one, instead of dreaming about an immaculate souffle that exists only in your head.

I was that guy. 13 Miles took a long time with endless tweaking, even after we'd shot it. It took 2 years of editing before we locked the cut. It was terrifying to actually say it was finished because it wasn’t “ready”. I was so obsessed with the idea of a perfect debut that I made zero debuts. Perfectionism can masquerade as professionalism or high standards, but often it’s just fear. Fear of failure, fear of making something mediocre, fear of criticism. So we stall. We say “just one more rewrite,” or “Just one more editing tweak, or when the stars align and some production company picks my micro-budget to EP.”

Contrast this with the Volume Strategy: making films early and often, embracing a mindset that each project is a stepping stone rather than a make-or-break pinnacle. This doesn’t mean churning out garbage; it means not overvaluing an unattainable ideal of perfection. It means valuing momentum and progress over endless preparation. Here’s something I've realized (ironically, while training for an Ironman triathlon): once you’ve got the basics down, the secret sauce is reps. Just like you get stronger by hitting the gym regularly, you become a better filmmaker by actually making films. It sounds stupidly obvious, but how many of us spend 90% of our time planning to make films instead of making them?

There's this concept called the 80% rule. If the film is 80% there, could you argue that most audience members won't know the difference between 80% and 90%? Or 90% and 99%? If that's so, then getting your film to 80% gets you into the "good enough" space, and anything more, if it holds you back from getting started on the next project, may be diminishing returns.

In fact, there’s a concept in psychology called “Threshold Theory.” It says that beyond a basic aptitude, what separates the pros from the rest is practice and volume. In other words, if you know how to operate a camera and tell a story (the baseline), the filmmaker who shoots five short films a year will outgrow the one who endlessly perfects one single short over five years. You don’t need to take my word for it. Let’s look at a filmmaker you’ve probably heard of who built his career on volume.

Building a Body of Work:

Case Study: Jim Cummings – the Indie Dynamo. Jim Cummings is the writer/director behind Thunder Road (and no, I don’t mean the Bruce Springsteen song, though that features heavily). Jim’s a bit of a legend in indie circles because he embodies the “just go make it” ethos. His career philosophy? Do, don’t wait. He famously wrote, directed, and starred in a single-take short film (“Thunder Road”) about a grieving cop nervously dancing and singing at his mom’s funeral. It was bold, it was weird, and it was brilliant, but importantly, it was done. He shot it in one day on a shoestring budget. That 13-minute short went on to win the Sundance Short Film Grand Jury Prize and became the springboard for his career .

Did Jim then spend the next ten years trying to top that short with a flawless feature? Nope. He expanded “Thunder Road” into a feature film the very next year, literally building on what he’d just made. Then he didn’t stop. He kept making films one after another, including The Wolf of Snow Hollow and The Beta Test. Jim advocates for filmmakers to be prolific and engage with their audience, not hide in a cave polishing a script. As he once said in an interview, “Everybody’s so terrified to do anything… But it takes doing something to do something. Being persistent is what makes you a director.”

It takes doing something to do something. Read that again. It’s basically the filmmaking equivalent of “you gotta play to win.” Jim’s persistence, his commitment to volume, is what made him a recognized director. He didn’t wait for permission, or a $5 million grant, or for Hollywood to knight him. He just made the next movie. And the next.

Now, Jim isn’t an isolated unicorn. His strategy echoes what some savvy indie filmmakers and even studios do. (Ever hear of Jason Blum? That guy turned Blumhouse into a juggernaut by making lots of low-budget horror films instead of one big-budget one, and it’s resulted in an avalanche of hits. Blum believes in low-risk, high-output filmmaking: give audiences ten pretty good scary movies and one of them will inevitably blow up. It’s a law of averages and a recipe for consistent success.)

The lesson Jim is clear: creating a body of work beats creating one “perfect” work. A body of work means multiple revenue streams, multiple chances to connect with an audience, multiple opportunities to learn and get better. It’s also how you build a sustainable career instead of a one-hit wonder (or worse, a no-hit wonder). Each film you finish is a small win that makes the next slightly easier or at least less daunting. This approach isn’t about lowering standards; it’s about raising output while maintaining reasonable quality. Perfection is a moving target, you’ll never hit it. But you can hit “pretty damn good” repeatedly, and trust me, that accumulation of pretty-damn-goods can take you really far.

So how can you actually embrace the Volume Strategy? Here are a few tactics that have helped me escape the perfection paralysis:

• Lower the Stakes (At First): Treat your next film like an experiment, not your magnum opus. It’s okay if it’s small. In fact, plan for it to be small and achievable. Smaller stakes = less fear = more likely to actually finish.
• Impose Deadlines: Nothing gets you moving like a deadline. Consider joining a timed filmmaking challenge (more on one amazing example in a minute) or set a personal deadline (“Script done in 30 days, shoot in 10, edit in 20”). Deadlines force you to prioritize finishing over perfecting.
• Embrace the 80/20 Rule: Get your film 80% of the way there quickly; don’t get bogged down in diminishing returns. That last 20% of “perfection” might take forever and won’t substantially improve the film for the audience. Release that director’s cut in 20 years if you must, but get the version out now that works.
• Learn & Move On: When (not if) you spot flaws in your finished film, make a note of what to improve next time and then let it go. Don’t re-open old projects endlessly; put that energy into the next project. Each film is a lesson for the following one.
• Leverage Your Portfolio: Once you have a few projects out, make them work for you. Could you monetize them on a streaming platform, sell downloads, or promote them as your calling card? Ten small films can collectively build your reputation and income more robustly than one big film ever could.

Momentum Over Perfection: The Quiet Canadians Journey

To bring this closer to home, let me share what’s happening with my own project. The Quiet Canadians is an indie spy thriller I’ve been developing (yes, it’s the one I’ve been bending your ear about in this newsletter!). This project has been a passion of mine for yearsm a modern spy tale made entirely in Canada, by Canadians. For a while, I fell a bit into my own trap of wanting it to be “just right” before moving forward. Spy thrillers can be ambitious, and I was courting some big partners, perfecting pitch decks, basically doing everything except make the damn movie. We had a couple of false starts and a lot of waiting... waiting for a distributor, funding decisions, waiting for scheduling, you name it.

Recently, I decided to take my own advice. Enough waiting. We pushed The Quiet Canadians into active production mode. In fact, we just entered casting this week. That’s right! We’re holding auditions, talking to actors, finally giving our characters faces and voices. And let me tell you, the difference in momentum is immediate and electric. At the beginning of this year, this project was mostly talk and a neat script. This past couple of months, it’s suddenly real, our Producers are having regular meetings and taking action steps, we are having creative discussions about cinematography and locations, we're beginning to get submissions through our casting director, and there’s a buzz around the project that simply wasn’t there before. And all it took was the decision to move forward. We didn’t magically get a $5 million budget overnight, we have just decided to take the next step with what we have.

It reinforced for me that sometimes you just have to move forward in order to move forward. Sounds like a tautology, but it’s true in practice. We could have stalled for another year chasing a “perfect” scenario: a bigger investor, a famous actor attachment, whatever. Instead, by starting casting now, we created momentum. That momentum attracts others: suddenly a people are more keen to clear time for us (“Oh, you’re actually filming soon? I’m in.”). A marketing idea turns into an actual plan because now we have dates to work with. Moving forward created a domino effect of progress. Action breeds action. It’s that simple.

Is our film perfectly set up? Nope. It isn't even funded yet. Will we face challenges? Absolutely (I can already foresee a dozen – indie filmmaking is basically creative problem solving on steroids). But we’re in a far better place than when we were chasing perfection on paper. We’re doing it, and that means this film has a real shot at existing. Momentum is a filmmaker’s best friend; you nurture it by, well… making moves. I often compare it to pushing a stalled car: it’s insanely hard to get it rolling at first, but once it’s moving, you can hop in and steer. By contrast, if you just sit in the driver’s seat fantasizing about the destination, that car ain’t moving, buddy.

Run N Gun: Embracing the Do-or-Die Filmmaking Spirit

If you need a shot of adrenaline and a concrete example of volume-over-perfection in action, let’s talk Run N Gun. For those unfamiliar, Run N Gun is Vancouver’s wildest filmmaking competition – a 48-hour frenzy where teams of filmmakers write, shoot, and edit a short film in just two days . It’s basically a creativity bootcamp (with lots of coffee and very little sleep). Nearly 900 short films have been birthed through Run N Gun and its sister events since it launched in 2015. That’s an insane amount of output – talk about volume! And you can bet not one of those films was “perfect.” How could it be? You’ve got 48 hours, a random prop you must use, maybe a weird line of dialogue thrown in as a challenge, and zero time to agonize. Perfection isn’t on the menu; doing is.

I haven’t participated in Run N Gun yet (cue the shame-faced look…I know, I know). But I’m a huge fan of what it represents. It’s the spirit of just going for it, distilled into one caffeine-fueled weekend. You see films that are rough around the edges, sure, but bursting with life and ideas. You also see some fantastic ones. Most of them are so risky you'd never make them if you had to think about them too much, but they are alive with energy and excitement. And the best part: people finish them. There’s a hard deadline, so every team must export something by the end. It forces you to tell perfectionism to take a hike. And often, the results have this raw brilliance precisely because the filmmakers weren’t overthinking every frame. They were too busy actually shooting the damn thing.

The ethos of Run N Gun aligns perfectly with our thesis here. It’s proof that when you prioritize volume (or at least the act of creation), you grow. I’ve spoken to participants who say that doing the 48-hour challenge leveled up their skills dramatically. Think about that: in two days you can make a film that opens doors, not because it is technically flawless (though it could be awesome), but because it's finished and put it out there. It gets seen by peers and mentors, and that can lead to new opportunities. Meanwhile, I know folks who have been tinkering on the same short film in their basement for three years and nobody’s ever seen it. Doors generally don’t open for you if nobody knows what you’re up to.

Even if you’re not in Vancouver, the principle stands: find or create your own Run N Gun-style challenges. Give yourself permission to make something fast and imperfect. It could be a weekend short film, a one-take experimental scene, whatever. The goal is to get out of your head and into production. As the saying goes, writers write, and I’ll add filmmakers film. The more you film, the more you’ll learn, and the more likely you’ll stumble upon that great piece of work that really advances your career. But you won’t stumble on anything if you’re standing still.

(Side note: If you are in Vancouver, the next Run N Gun competition weekend is coming up and registration is this weekend (April 20). I’m excited about it even as a spectator. And hey, maybe I’ll screw up my courage and actually register a team this year – stranger things have happened!)

One Movie at a Time: The Path to a Sustainable Indie Career

At the end of the day, the thesis “why volume beats perfection” isn’t about churning out crap or ignoring quality. It’s about letting go of ego and fear enough to produce work consistently. A sustainable indie filmmaking career is akin to building a brick wall: you lay bricks one by one. Each film you make is a brick in that wall. Some bricks will be a little crooked, some will be oddly shaped, but the wall stands because you kept laying them. If you refuse to place a brick until you find the perfect brick… you’ll never build your wall.

I’m building my own career brick by brick, film by film. 13 Miles, The Quiet Canadians, the next one after that. Each project may not be perfect, but it exists, it’s out there doing something. And each one teaches me things, brings me new connections, and yes, over time, brings in income that helps fund the next. There is insane power in momentum. When you have a body of work, opportunities come to you. People see that you’re active and serious. Maybe a distributor reaches out because you suddenly have a slate of films that collectively attract interest. Or a fan following grows because they know you’ll keep delivering stories they care about. It’s the difference between a one-hit wonder band and a band that tours and puts out an album every year. Who do you think has the more secure, devoted fanbase and livelihood?

I want to encourage you, fellow aspiring or working indie filmmaker reading this, to think about what volume over perfection could mean in your own path. Maybe it’s finally filming that short script that’s been sitting on your desktop, even if you have to use your iPhone and your roommates as actors. Maybe it’s moving on from a project that died in development and starting a fresh, simpler one you know you can finish this year. Maybe it’s saying “yes” to more opportunities, even if they’re not the big break you envisioned, because they add to your experience and portfolio.

Sometimes the biggest favour you can do for your dream is to just start. Start before you’re ready, start when you’re scared, start when it’s imperfect. Especially then. The Quiet Canadians is rolling because we finally started. Your project will too. If you need that friendly shove, consider this article me gently (or not so gently) shoving you: Go make your movie. Then, make another. Keep going. One movie at a time.

And hey, if you want to dive deeper into this topic, we just recorded a podcast episode with the founders of Run & Gun, Sasha Duncan and Joel McCarthy, where we dig into exactly how indie filmmakers can build a profitable, self-sustaining career by doing what we’ve talked about: controlling your filmmaking business and output on your own terms. It’s a great conversation, and a perfect companion to what you’ve read here. Check out the podcast episode when you have a moment. I think you’ll find it both inspiring and practically useful, especially if you’re feeling stuck waiting for that perfect opportunity.

Finally, a friendly heads-up for the locals: if you’re in the Vancouver area, Run N Gun is gearing up right now. Registration opens this weekend (Saturday, April 20, at midnight, and the 48-hour film competition itself is just around the corner . If you’ve been reading this thinking “hmm, maybe I should try making something quick,” well, here’s your chance! Sign up, join the chaos, and make a film in 48 hours. Even if you don’t win any awards, you’ll have created a film in one weekend and that’s a win you can carry into your next project. Sometimes jumping in is the best way to learn to swim.

To wrap up, remember: volume beats perfection. Momentum beats stagnation. An “okay” film you make today trumps the “perfect” film you never make. So dust off that script, grab your camera, rally your friends, and make something. Your sustainable career as an indie filmmaker is waiting... one movie at a time.

Sometimes you just have to move forward in order to move forward. Now, let’s all get out there and shoot!

– Anthony (He/Him)

P.S. Don’t forget to give that podcast episode a listen for more insights and laughs, and if you’re around, maybe I’ll catch you at Run N Gun this weekend. Now stop reading and go make a movie!** **

P.S. Love these emails? Buy me a coffee to say "thanks"!

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Ways to Work With Me

​Consultation Calls: Great for Pitch Deck reviews, script discussions, pep talks. JUST a few more spots available in April at $100/session. In May I will be increasing to $150/session, which is still well worth it in my humble opinion, as we'll probably save you months of heartache.

NEW SERVICE: If you’re ready to stop waiting and finally make your feature film, I’m offering a rare one-year intensive where we work side-by-side to develop, package, and move your project toward production. You’ll write or direct your film—I’ll help you produce it, build the strategy, and hold you accountable every step of the way. Not only will you get one-on-one support from me, but you'll also join a small, committed cohort of fellow filmmakers taking the same journey. This is a partnership for filmmakers ready to go all in.

​Book a free 45-minute discovery call to see if we’re the right fit to make this happen together.

Resources I Like That Could Help You

1. 🎬 If you’re looking for a no-fluff, boots-on-the-ground kind of course to actually make your film this year, check out Make It Now Filmmaking by my friend Tyler Reid. It’s launching May 12, and there is a pre-launch sale on right now. I've see a sneak peak and it will be super practical and designed to get you moving right now — no waiting, no wishing.
2. 🎬 6K Filmmaker – A practical guide for indie filmmakers on how to make movies with low-budget, high-quality production techniques. Check it out here.​
3. 📝 Idea to Outline Workshop (by Naomi Beatty) – A step-by-step system to take your film idea and turn it into a structured, compelling outline. Perfect for screenwriters at any stage. Join the workshop here.​

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The Adaptive Filmmaker The Film Industry Is Evolving—Are You? With 15 years in Hollywood and Canadian TV productions, I navigate today's rapidly evolving film industry while sharing my journey through uncharted territory. Through my weekly newsletter and Off The Lot podcast, I deliver real-world insights and practical strategies from active projects—helping fellow filmmakers adapt and thrive in an industry that's constantly redefining itself. Subscribe​

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Watch and Support My Previous Work

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Upcoming Projects

"The Quiet Canadians", a feature movie about skilled Canadian operatives who are trained in the elimination of local and foreign targets, is in development. Click here for more information​

"Xing'er: Origins", a feature film about a family's fight for survival against a deadly sect of assassins, is in development. Click here to find out more.​

See more of our projects in development by checking out our website.​
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