Geary McLeod

Before he was a successful film and TV cinematographer, Geary McLeod was a well-respected camera operator and a frequent member of director Spike Lee's production team. He started out in the '80s manning cameras on everything from "Lethal Weapon," the quintessential buddy-cop movie that made Mel Gibson a household name, to Brian De Palma's socio-political satire "The Bonfire of the Vanities." By the end of the '90s, McLeod had worked on a number of high-profile films and struck up a professional relationship with the idiosyncratic Lee; he served as secondary camera operator on the civil rights drama "Get on the Bus" and on the semi-autobiographical "Crooklyn," and was credited as first assistant camera on the award-winning biopic "Malcolm X," with Denzel Washington portraying the controversial political figure. During the 2000s McLeod branched out into cinematography; he worked on the set of Steven Bochco's medical drama "City of Angels," and collaborated with "The Five Heartbeats" director Robert Townsend on "Carmen: A Hip Hopera," adapted from the classic opera about the beautiful and fiery gypsy. McLeod has since worked on the quickly canceled sitcoms "Barbershop" and "Dirt," the latter of which was produced by lead actress Courtney Cox, and joined the production staff of the psychic mystery series "The Mentalist."