Making the Most of Your 60-Day Challenge
“Virus” Matt Crosse (2025)
The 60-Day Challenge gives you a catch, a deadline and a reason to make something.
What happens between Kick-Off and submission is up to you.
Maybe you've already filled a notebook with ideas. Maybe you're still looking for collaborators. Maybe you've made a dozen short films before, or this will be your first.
Wherever you're starting from, the goal isn't just to get a film finished. The 60-Day Challenge is an opportunity to develop your artistic voice, try something new, meet other filmmakers and make the strongest film you can with the time and resources you have.
Here are a few things to keep in mind along the way.
“Mapendo” Tareck El Ali (2025)
Tell the best version of your story
A maximum runtime is a limit, not a goal.
Last year's 60-Day Challenge allowed films up to six minutes long. That didn't mean every film needed to be six minutes.
If your story works beautifully in four minutes, make a four-minute film.
Short films ask you to make choices. Where does the story really begin? What does the audience need to know? What can you show instead of explain? What can you leave out?
You'll probably have more than one idea when the catch is revealed. Give yourself some room to explore them. Think about the story, but also think about what each idea would take to make.
If you're sacrificing what makes a story work just to fit it into the available runtime, it may not be the right version of that story for this Challenge.
Sometimes making an idea smaller makes the film stronger.
“No Evil” Kenneth Joe-Ezigbo
Work with what you have
Every production has constraints.
Maybe you only have access to one great location. Your actors might only be available for one weekend. You might have limited equipment, a small crew or a very specific set of skills around the table.
Those constraints don't have to work against you.
Take a look at what you do have. Maybe it's an unusual location, a great performer, someone who loves sound design or a collaborator with a skill you hadn't originally planned around.
Then ask a simple question:
Can we make this idea well in 60 days?
A smaller idea that you can execute confidently may serve you better than a complicated production that spends the entire Challenge fighting against its limitations.
“The Long Game” Judah Olotu
Give yourself something to explore
The Challenge is also a chance to experiment.
Maybe there's a technique you've wanted to try: a particular lighting approach, unusual sound design, practical effects, animation, a long take or a different way of editing a scene.
You don't need to reinvent every part of filmmaking at once. Give yourself one creative challenge within the larger Challenge.
Think about the audience, too. What will make them curious? What image might stay with them? Could sound tell part of the story? Could an edit create a laugh, a surprise or an emotional shift?
Interesting filmmaking doesn't have to mean complicated filmmaking. Sometimes restraint is the most interesting choice.
The question is: How can you use the tools of filmmaking to tell this particular story?
“Forget Me Not” Tara Mühlberghuber
There isn't one kind of Digi60 film
The 60-Day Challenge isn't limited to traditional narrative shorts.
Make a comedy. Make horror. Make a documentary, animation, experimental film, drama or something that doesn't fit neatly into one category.
The format should serve the idea.
Rather than trying to figure out what a Digi60 film is “supposed” to look like, think about the kind of work you want to make.
The Challenge can be a place to develop your voice, not just demonstrate what you already know how to do.
“Take 5 (Set Reps)” Catharine Horsley
Make it with people
One of the things we hear again and again from Digi60 filmmakers is that the people they meet are one of the strongest parts of the experience.
So reach out.
Talk to people at Digi60 events. Introduce yourself on Discord. Ask for help when you need it, and offer yours when you can.
Maybe someone needs a sound recordist and you've been wanting more experience with sound. Maybe you're looking for an actor and another filmmaker knows exactly the right person. Maybe you help make someone's film one weekend and they help with yours the next.
Filmmaking is collaborative. The Challenge is a chance to expand the group of people you create with, and some of those relationships may last much longer than 60 days.
The Digi60 Discord is a great place to start when looking for collaborators.
“Seeing Friends” Jason Dai
Leave yourself time to finish
Sixty days can sound like a lot of time at Kick-Off.
It goes quickly.
People get sick. Locations fall through. Weather changes. Scenes take longer than expected. And the film you shoot may lead you somewhere slightly different from the film you imagined at the beginning.
Leave yourself room for that.
And remember that shooting isn't the finish line. Editing, sound, colour, music, subtitles, credits, exports and actually watching the finished film all take time.
You don't have to stick to every decision you made on Day 1. A performance might change a character. An unexpected location might give you a better scene. Something you loved on the page might not work in the edit.
Have a plan, but pay attention to what the film needs as you're making it.
“Crimes of Passion” Sammy Lewis
Make your film,
not a film for the jury
It can be tempting to wonder what kind of film will “do well.”
Try not to build your film around guessing what a jury might want.
One way to think about the 60-Day Challenge is a little like The Great British Bake Off: the films can be very different from one another and still succeed on their own terms.
The jury considers the concept and how effectively the filmmaker has brought that idea to the screen. Your comedy doesn't need to be somebody else's documentary. Your animation doesn't need to behave like a live-action drama.
Make the film you're trying to make.
Awards are a great way to recognize strong work, but they're not the only measure of a successful Challenge.
Maybe you make the strongest film you've made so far. Maybe you discover a collaborator you want to work with again. Maybe you finally try animation, learn what good sound can do for an edit or take a creative risk that leads somewhere unexpected.
Maybe this is simply the film that makes you want to make another one.
Every finished film becomes part of your practice.
The 60-Day Challenge gives you a framework, a deadline, an audience and a community. What you make within that framework is yours.
Make something you're excited to share. Try something you haven't tried before. Meet somebody new.
And make the best version of the film you can make right now.
Header image: “404 Connection Not Found” Fable for Five Films (2025)