Mahoning County producer’s animated short film set to screen at major festival
A Mahoning County native produced an animated short film called “Ümit,” screening this fall at the star-studded and selective Savannah Film Festival in Georgia.
Lucia Naples’ passion for animation started when she was watching cartoons in her Poland home.
“They inspired me to start drawing and exploring that creative realm,” Naples said. “I grew up going to Holy Family in Poland, and for high school, I went to Ursuline. I loved it; it was such an awesome school.”
After graduation, Naples decided to pursue animation at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
She received encouragement from teachers and advisors at Ursuline to pursue a creative career after graduation.
“Alana Campbell was my mentor throughout high school and doing arts,” Naples said. “If I ever needed help or guidance, she was always there to answer questions or give advice. I totally give her a lot of credit throughout my creative journey. I was immediately just blown away by what SCAD had to offer.”
At SCAD, Naples started the school’s first 2-D animation club during her junior year, an experience that led her to find an interest in producing.
“By the end, we had over 900 members,” she said. “I was hosting events with over 250 people, renting out huge venues, bringing in really awesome guests from the animation industry to come and talk to our school in person. It ended up being really successful. I decided being the one in charge of organizing these projects and organizing, that’s really what I love.”
Entering her senior year, Naples said she shifted her focus from animating to producing animated films.
“’Ümit’ was my senior thesis project at SCAD; we call them capstone films,” she said. “The word Ümit actually translates to hope in Kazakh.”
The short film is set in the fifteenth-century Kazakh Kingdom, which is modern-day Kazakhstan.
“My director, Amina, she’s from Kazakhstan, and she came to Savannah, Georgia specifically for school,” Naples said. “She’s been living in Savannah for about four years, and she had this idea for a story about a young girl in the Kazakh kingdom that wants to bring back the sun.”
In their story, the Kazakh village hasn’t seen the sun for about 1,000 years.
“Because of this, the people have grown cold, not just in a literal sense, but they’re also stubborn and don’t have a lot of faith,” Naples said. “Umit works with the children of the village to build a drum in order to help bring back the sun. I won’t spoil the ending about what happens for you know, the time when people watch the film, but that’s kind of the general plot is she wants to bring the sun back to her village that has kind of hardened through the coldness and darkness.”
The short film was produced over 30 weeks, divided into different phases of pre-production, visual development, production, editing and animation.
“In the spring, we finalized the film,” Naples said. “When we were making this film about snow and cold, we’re living in a city that’s notorious for being warm and sunny. But something super interesting is there’s a statistic that it’ll only snow in Savannah once every 10 or so years, and this was one of those years where we got snow, and we got a lot of it. We all went to the park to take reference pictures in the snow.”
Naples said now the reward is getting to show “Ümit” to everyone at film festivals, including the Savannah Film Festival on Oct. 25 through Nov. 1.
She said as a SCAD graduate, it feels “surreal” to be in the star-studded and highly-anticipated festival.
“I remember from this past year we had Chris Sanders, who was the director of How To Train Your Dragon and The Wild Robot,” Naples said. “He is just fantastic getting to hear him talk about his work. It’s so crazy being in a festival with famous directors and actors that are there that could potentially see our work and reach out to us. We’re sharing the screen with so many amazing artists.”
Through SCAD, Naples secured an internship in Minneapolis as a production assistant at a commercial animation studio.
“I learned a lot about collaborating with my team in that sense, and working with people and figuring out how to make certain things work,” she said. “I’m very thankful for having a team that was super, super responsive to critique and always willing to one up the film in by any means necessary.”
