>"20 years ago I did my first movie - The Hunger - and I couldn't get arrested in Hollywood for four years," jokes Tony Scott. "I ended up shooting commercials and taking meetings. People thought I could only make artsy esoteric house movies. Then Top Gun came along."

>Nobody said crossing over was easy, especially for humble spot makers with no credentials to speak of: "You eat a big slice of humble pie when you move into features as a first-time director, because you're not the big fish anymore," explains Tom Dey, who broke in with Shanghai Noon and more recently with Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy in Showtime. "You don't have the tools of the commercial world and you have to compromise. You're not the dictator anymore."

>Length is another consideration; spot directors can lose track of the big picture, as they're accustomed to creating the story within a :30 time frame. "It's down to each individual," adds Scott on the persona of the director: "The obvious analogy is that commercial directors get tied up in the minutiae and lose sight of character and story. Of course, there are the successes who keep that school [of directors crossing over] from commercials to feature alive, such as myself, my brother Ridley and Alan Parker. But every year some fucker comes along and buries us by going way over budget and losing sight of story and character, so that the studios swear that's the last guy they'll take from advertising."

>Stephan Elliott's big break came in 1994 with the huge cult indie success The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Elliott then spent years shaking off drag queen scripts, until recently embracing the notion once again for Archers through Saatchi, London. Moving into spot making from an independent directing standpoint left Elliott with many creative options: "The entire budget of the campaign came in at £1 million - that's what it took to make Priscilla. It was the first time I pulled out ideas that I'd shelved, ideas I couldn't realize in Priscilla. Commercials are an interesting expressive tool, especially if you come from a low-budget film world."

>"It's a very different position in a film, as the director's in creative control," explains writer, actor and director John Landis. "In a commercial, the director is basically servicing a product." Landis, repped through A Band Apart in LA, is best known for features such as Trading Places, American Werewolf in London and for Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. "There are directors who make spectacular commercials who will never be able to make features."

>"There are so many things that can go wrong," says Dey on his experiences. "You definitely need to have good luck on your side when you make the transition. One of the harder things is changing pace. Everything is accelerated in the spot world, but is slowed down in features. The biggest difference is tracking a story over an hour and a half. I read the script once a week to keep the big picture fresh in my mind. Working closely with aneditor is also solid advice, cutting as you're shooting the work."

>Concludes Landis. "Simply stated, it's much easier to be amusing for 30 seconds than for a hour and a half."

But that's just our opinion... please tell us yours. What do you think of directors crossing over between formats? E-mail your comments or opinions to editorial@boardsmag.com