Tamika Lamison hired to serve as program director
The AICP has announced an expansion of its Commercial Directors Diversity Program (CDDP) with new wrinkles that include intensive industry training, mentoring and the awarding of grants to fund spec spots. Tamika Lamison has been hired to serve as program director and will help facilitate CDDP’s growth, advancing its mission to foster greater awareness of diverse talent and to increase directing opportunities for women and other historically underrepresented groups of people.
After CDDP’s first showcase of work for promising directors back in January at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, organizers met to assess the event, discussed ways to improve the program and to help realize its goals. What’s come out of this thorough analysis is a targeted program of outreach, mentorship and exposure. A select number of women and ethnic minority applicants will have access to three months of training and guidance, including workshops specific to the intricacies of the ad world (i.e., preparing winning treatments, the art of conference calling), hands-on mentoring by industry professionals, and networking opportunities. In addition to working with directors to become familiar with the commercial production process, program participants will be offered a grant to complete a spec commercial. This spec fare may also be screened and/or made available to the industry at large. The CDDP program is designed to help pair unsigned, talented directors with AICP member production companies.
The CDDP is now accepting applications. Click here for more info and to apply.
Lamison joins CDDP from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where she was a research consultant. She is also the founder of the non-profit Make A Film Foundation, which grants seriously ill children film-based wishes.
Created during contract talks between the AICP and the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the CDDP reflects the commitment of both organizations to increase the representation of underrepresented groups in the commercial directing ranks.
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More