11 Cinematographers Who Became Great Directors

The examples of actors who have gone on to direct films are presumably rather widely known. You have your Afflecks, your Eastwoods, your Jolies and numerous others. Screenwriters may be somewhat less famous when they try their hands at directing their own features, but there are many of these too, such as Charlie Kaufman, Shane Black, and Paul Schrader, to name but a few.

Darren Ruecker Mar 21, 2014 1:13 pm2014-05-11T21:18:06-05:00

5) Ernest Dickerson

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Ernest Dickerson boasts an impressive list of cinematography credits, with the most notable among these being his early collaborations with Spike Lee. Dickerson was Lee’s director of photography for his formative feature films, from She’s Gotta Have It, to Do the Right Thing, up to Malcolm X. The look of these films was one of the defining features of Lee’s innovative and striking new style. He was also the cinematographer on Eddie Murphy Raw.

His feature directing career got off to a promising start in 1992 with the release of Juice starring Tupac, but his subsequent directorial efforts were met with negative responses. A bigger move than going from cinematographer to director seems to be when he switched from directing features to directing television, leading episodes of The Wire in 2003 and onward. Today, he’s a frequent director of The Walking Dead and did numerous episodes of Dexter and Treme over the past few years.

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