John McLean started in the film industry at Kinelab in 1954 when 15 years old. Kinelab was housed in the old Adams Hotel in George St. where the Hilton Hotel is now. John's job was mainly in the lab, mastering the art of manual dye fades and negative fades (with Cyanide!) and in the Optical Sound Track departments where he spent many hours in the dark producing the tracks for 35mm and 16mm copies of the John Heyer classic "Back of Beyond".

In 1956 and seeking a future outside of darkrooms, John harassed the well-known cinematographer Ross Wood at Pagewood Studios, writing to him every day for months. John says that, to preserve his sanity, Wood finally relented and gave him a job in the camera department.

Pagewood was just completing both a feature version and a TV series version of 'Long John Silver' starring Robert Newton. Pagewood then embarked on a series of features 'Robbery Under Arms' (Peter Finch version), 'The Shiralee' again with Peter Finch, 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll', 'Siege of Pinchgut', 'Smiley Gets a Gun'. He had proven his worth to Wood and got to work on them all, albeit as Clapper Boy and later as Focus Puller.

In 1965 John was given the opportunity to shoot his first feature film as DOP, Demonstrator (1971), with director Warwick Freeman. His cinematography of this film won him a Gold Tripod in 1971 at the inaugural ACS Awards for his skillful and imaginative use of camera and lighting.

In 1973 John won his second ACS Gold Tripod, plus the Milli Award and named Cinematographer of the Year for his cinematography of the US TV feature The Hands of Cormac Joyce (1972). During his impressive career John was DOP on fourteen feature films, including the film that launched Peter Weir's international career Paris'i Yiyen Otomobiller (1974).

John then became a partner in the very successful production company Segway Productions with Robert Walker (editor) and Peter Hopwood (cinematographer), producing high quality television commercials and documentaries.