Â鶹ԼÅÄ

This week launches a selection of exclusive iPlayer short films from up-and-coming Scottish talent.

Could there be a future Oscar winner among them?

Before being given creative control over multi-million pound feature films, many acclaimed directors cut their teeth on low budget short films.

Here are seven examples from some of the top talent working today.

Star Wars creator George Lucas began experimenting with sci-fi while studying at the University of Southern California.

The plot of his 1967 short film, , bears some similarities to George Orwell’s 1984, with the central character trying to escape from the attentions of an oppressive surveillance state.

By agreeing to teach filmmaking classes to sailors from the US Navy, Lucas was given considerable resources by USC, .

He also enlisted the sailors to appear on screen in addition to serving as his crew.

The short film was later extended to a feature and released in 1971 as THX 1138.

Given that Wes Anderson’s , it’s hard to imagine that he started out working in black and white.

His 1992 short film, Bottle Rocket, .

Frequent Anderson collaborators Owen and Luke Wilson starred as a pair of thieves in training.

It received and Anderson went on to remake the film into a full-length colour feature of the same name in 1996.

While celebrated critic Roger Ebert felt the films had its flaws, he argued that it demonstrated a lot of potential on the part of director and stars.

He signed off his review, ‘I'm looking forward to whatever Anderson and the Wilsons do next’.

My Best Friend’s Birthday shouldn’t actually be a short: its original run time was around 70 minutes.

But a lab fire destroyed the much of the film, .

It was in 1987 while Tarantino was working in a video store.

Tarantino starred as Clarence Pool in the film, as well as writing and directing.

Some of his trademark touches, like extensive pop-culture dissections, are evident throughout.

Sections of dialogue would go on to be reused in True Romance, the 1993 Tony Scott-directed film which Tarantino scripted.

Jane Campion’s recent work in television on has been widely acclaimed.

But in the early days of her career her short film Peel .

It did, however, prove to be a big hit at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986, landing her a coveted Palme d’Or award.

The action takes place on a tense road trip where a father and his two children argue over a discarded orange peel.

Like much of Campion’s later work, including the Oscar-winning The Piano, .

Spike Lee was distinctly unimpressed when he was required to study The Birth of a Nation at film school in New York.

While the film is lauded for its , it’s also deeply racist.

Lee responded with a film of his own called The Answer.

This 20-minute short tells the story of an African-American screenwriter who tries to remake The Birth of a Nation.

The reaction among his tutors was not positive.

One of his professors, Roberta Hodes, said, ‘I just think it offended everyone. I felt offended, too, I’m ashamed to say.’

Other staff thought he should be thrown off the course.

But the former head of the film department, Eleanor Hamerow, said that .

David Lynch made a number of short films before moving into features and television.

In The Grandmother, a boy with abusive parents .

‘ ... It came from this particular character’s need – a need that that prototype can provide. Grandmothers get playful. And they relax a little, and they have unconditional love. And that’s what this kid, you know, conjured up.’

The Grandmother , such as a soundtrack with filled with industrial thrumming and hissing.

, a year before Sofia Coppola’s debut feature, The Virgin Suicides.

Sofia is the daughter of Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola.

Despite coming from a legendary Hollywood family, Sofia Coppola also cut her directing teeth with a short film.

Lick the Star tells the story of a group of schoolgirls who decide to attack some of their male colleagues with poison.

The trademarks of Coppola’s feature films, like Lost in Translation, are evident in the film: .