Nathalie Sejean just posted a fascinating post on her excellent site, Mentorless.com titled To Short or Not to Short? 20 Filmmakers Who Successfully Transitioned from Short to Feature.

In it she lists twenty filmmakers from George Lucas (THX-1138) to Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) who graduated from shorts to features.

See the wonderful infographic.

Canadian filmmakers interested in this path should apply to Bell Media‘s Shorts-to-Features Program right away — the deadline is in two days!

My take: I think this is a good strategy. Particularly because we live in such a visually-dominant age, the more you can show of your storyverse to your potential fans and backers, the better. I lean towards reworking one or two scenes from your feature as a stand-alone short — now you’ve got a film and footage to cut into your crowd-finding pitch video.