10. Do Some Acting
This might sound terrifying to many of you. You thought you were getting behind the camera to stay out of the spotlight and let someone more attractive and less nervous do all that 'acting' business. But as someone who got into filmmaking having once wanting to be an actor, it is really invaluable experience. One of, if not the most important things you will do as a director is interact with actors. It is your job to get compelling performances from you them. Seeing as you may be working with amateur actors for your first short, you will find that incredibly difficult, maybe even impossible. But having an understanding of the craft and how these strange creatures called actors will at least give you a fighting chance. Sure you could read some literature on Bertolt Brecht and Constantin Stanislavski to get an idea about the theory of acting but there really is no experience quite like getting up on stage and learning for yourself. You will quickly learn phrases like, "give me more" or "you should try that, but happier" are damn near useless to an actor. Good performances comes from emotional association and being able to talk to an actor so they make choices from emotional memory, as opposed to simple ideas like 'happy' or 'sad', will greatly improve the performance you get from your leading man or woman.