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ERIC DYSON PHOTOS BY ERIC FISCHER
Eric Dyson has a history with the Emerging Cinematographer Awards that is unique within ICG. The 2024 ECA entry, Sweet Santa Barbara Brown, shot by Local 600 Operator Dominic J. Bartolone, Jr., SOC, marks the second short film Dyson has premiered at the ECA’s – as a director. (The first, Baby Steps, screened in 2018.) That’s right. The 30-year IATSE member, who worked his way up from loader to 2nd AC, to 1st AC, and then operator, has also been writing and directing short projects throughout his long career in the camera department. Dyson says the twin inspirations of his father, a jazz musician and amateur black-and-white photographer who had his own darkroom, and his mother, an entrepreneur who started her
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own payroll company, “was a combination in my home that was the real start of my career in this industry.” Another big influence was working for Fritz Goode who ran Masai Films, one of the only Black-owned production companies in Hollywood at that time. “Joseph Wilcots, who worked with Fritz, shot the original Roots miniseries,” Dyson shares. “So, being there as a 16-year old was an incredible experience – Fritz would say, ‘This is Eric. He’s going to be a cinematographer.’ Even though I didn’t really know what that was!” Dyson attended Brooks Institute of Photography on a three-year program, where all students had to buy a four-by-five camera and retouch negatives, regardless of whether their
focus was still or motion picture photography. But Dyson says he’s known since high school that moving images were his first love. “My parents bought me a Betamax camcorder in 1985, so I was the AV nerd holding the big camera at high school events,” he describes. “Between that and working for Masai, the roadmap was laid out by the time I got to Brooks and I just kept following in that direction.” That roadmap also included a three-year stop at Amblin Entertainment, culminating as a set P.A. on the Amblin-produced TV series SeaQuest 2032, shot by Ken Zunder and Stephen McNutt. Of his Amblin days, Dyson says, “Watching Steven Spielberg play with these little dinosaurs [to map out shots for Jurassic Park], and me recording that with a tiny