Today we’d like to introduce you to Shayna Naemi.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Shayna. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I want to start by saying I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. There’s so much pressure to know that from such a young age. We’re asked this question our entire lives as though our desires won’t fluctuate or as if we’re not allowed to change our minds once we choose something. The pressure to find a passion and settle on it is so limiting. We’re not allowed the opportunity to explore and understand what we like before settling on something, and we’re expected to know our lifelong interests before we even fully know ourself.
Clearly, I’m a firm believer in switching career paths. I don’t believe that everyone experiences a strong sense of “a calling.” I think that’s another unnecessary pressure. But I do believe in pursuing things you’re interested in, even things you might be interested in. And I believe you can do this no matter what point you’re at in life. That mentality contributed to my story today.
Another large part of this story is that I’m a first-generation Chaldean-American. My parents met in the United States but were born in Iraq and immigrated here when they were teenagers. I owe so much to my mother. My father passed away shortly before I was born, so she raised my two older siblings and me on her own while working, going to school, and assimilating to a new culture and language. She’s a force of nature. If you ask me what sacrifice is, I’ll always point to her.
My privilege along with the sacrifice of my mother and siblings afforded me many opportunities. I studied pre-med at the University of Michigan for three years before taking my first film class. That class sparked an interest and late in my junior year, well after you’re meant to choose a major, I made the 180 switch from pre-med to Screen Arts & Cultures, a combination of history, theory, and production of film and television. So many things in my life at that time led me to this decision, but namely a huge perspective shift in how I viewed our time on earth, how much we have, and what you can or should choose to do with it. My entire life I’d had this bone-deep desire to help people, so becoming a doctor always made sense. Letting go of that felt like I was letting go of an integral part of myself, but what helped was understanding that you can help people in so many different ways. Medicine can save lives, but so can story and representation. I could choose to be a part of projects that resonated with me, to help tell stories that I knew would move others in ways that could be transformative for them.
I stayed an extra year at the University of Michigan and had some excellent professors who challenged me and pushed me out of my comfort zone. The SAC program has a final production class where they select a feature written by another SAC student in the highest level screenwriting class and have them condense it into a roughly 30 minutes short. I took that class in my final semester and I, with the help of an astounding team, produced All At Once which premiered at the Traverse City Film Festival in 2015. After graduating, I stayed another year in Ann Arbor working two jobs to save up to move to Los Angeles. In September of 2016, I packed my car and did a 20-day solo road trip from Michigan to LA, stopping along the way to see friends and National Parks. This trip was a reawakening for my soul. If you ever have an opportunity to do any kind of solo trip, I highly recommend it. It was truly one of the most reflective experiences I’ve ever had and allowed me to push my limits and grow in ways I couldn’t imagine.
This September will be four years in Los Angeles. It hasn’t been easy being so far from family, and every time I see my niece and nephew, see their smiles missing a new tooth, I feel like I’m missing out. But you have to give in some places to gain in others. I’ve had the chance to work on a couple of wonderful television shows and a 3D animated short called The Social Chameleon. I’ve also formed a new community of friends and coworkers that I can’t imagine life without and settled into another city that I can also call home.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I don’t know if pursuing a creative career is ever a smooth road. It’s a constant grind of long nights, deadlines, trouble-shooting, people questioning your choices, self-doubt, and struggling to find balance.
I was talking to a friend about this recently and we agreed the biggest thing that gets in the way of us is ourselves. Self-doubt is crippling. Self-doubt along with people questioning your decisions can be debilitating. I’ll always remember just after I switched my major, a friend’s Dad took me out for lunch and questioned me about the choice, saying it was something difficult to turn back from, and that it would be hard to get back on that track after this. He was well-intentioned but sometimes people react with a dismissive “good luck” because they know you’re going to be struggling financially for the first ten years. It’s never easy to hear that, but I’m glad for those comments because these moments helped me understand how much I truly believed in myself and the grit I had to make this dream a reality. We underestimate the power of the voice inside us that says, “You can do this.” It reminds us we all have potential, and if we let it loose, it allows for beautiful things to happen.
Every career has its own set of challenges but in this industry, just getting your foot in the door can be an enormous hurdle. There’s no set ladder you climb to get to where you need to be. And sometimes, you’ll be three rungs up one ladder and realize you don’t want that after all, so you’ll have to sidestep to another one and start over. I worked two, sometimes three, jobs my first year in LA, including a job at a senior living center where, among other things, I taught an iPhone class every Thursday at 11am to all my 90-year-old friends. In my spare time, I would try to go to networking events, talk to anyone I could about the industry, ask people to meet up for coffee, all in hopes that it would eventually lead somewhere. And it did. I can’t stress enough the impact networking had on my career, both with people who were established and peers in the same position I was.
In an industry where you often work 12 hour days, finding balance is a constant struggle. I’ve learned the importance of unplugging frequently, getting into nature whenever I can to re-center myself, dancing as often as possible, and investing in hobbies. One of my favorite things about Los Angeles is its proximity to so many National Parks. I went on a five day, four-night backpacking trek in the Eastern Sierras earlier this year and it was a constant sigh of relief, some much-needed self-care. I’ve picked up my camera a lot more these past few years. My boss Michael has been such an amazing mentor and friend, really pushing me to explore my photography more in both film and digital realms. He gave me his Dad’s old Canon AE-1 and it has been my baby since late 2018. I love her. I’m really grateful I’ve started prioritizing balance early on because it’s essential to find ways to breathe, take care of ourselves, and love ourselves outside of work.
What has been the proudest moment of your career so far?
My work as a producer on The Social Chameleon for the last two and a half years has been so special. It’s a 3D animated short about a chameleon who is good at fitting in with all the other animals but doesn’t know how to be himself. The story follows Cosmo the Chameleon day by day as he successfully postures and fits in with each animal group, but ultimately returns home alone and empty. He doesn’t know how to change his colors – or even that he can – until one day his fate is turned by another chameleon. It’s a story about the difficulty that comes with finding your place in the world and the importance of being true to yourself.
We wanted to use this project as an opportunity to give back. Our project features animals that are all native to one of the most unique biomes of biodiversity in the world: Madagascar. Unfortunately, like many of our natural wonders around the world, Madagascar is suffering the effects of climate change, human encroachment, and deforestation. We partnered with Madagascar Wildlife Conservation and Centre ValBio, two groups that aid in conservation efforts for the island. All funds remaining after production and any profits from the short film will be donated to these two non-profit organizations. Our third partner is Creative Visions, a creative activism group based in Los Angeles that has been so helpful in spreading the word about the project and helping us get it off the ground.
This project has been quite the journey. Animation is so different from live-action. The project has no dialogue and is told through pantomime, so it relies heavily on the visual expression of the characters. Our storyboard artist Larry Scholl, who has worked on Mulan and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book, among other things, did such an excellent job portraying this. We’re working with an outstanding animation studio in India, and our team is turning out stunning 3D renders of the characters. We also recently recorded our score and could not be happier with how everything is coming together.
Watching this unfold has been so rewarding and I’ve been so proud to work alongside our incredible team. Alex Ross, our Writer/Director/Producer and Andrew Austin, one of our Executive Producers have poured so much heart and love into this. It’s come so far from when Alex pitched it to me in the tiny kitchen of a bungalow on the studio lot we were working on. He had drawn it all out on 3 x 5 notecards with little descriptions on the back, and even then, his belief in the story was so evident. And I believed in it, and him, too.
Please check out our website for more info on The Social Chameleon and donate or share if you feel inspired by the story! We can’t wait to share it with everyone.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thesocialchameleon.org
- Instagram: @shaynaemi
Image Credit:
Rachel Naemi, Shayna Naemi, Josh Gronlund, Adam Perez
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