Motivational speaker and filmmaker Shaun Naidoo moved to Joburg in 1999 and aims to uplift the youth and impact South Africans with a message of hope for their future.
Naidoo failed matric 1997 and spent eight years after that doing odd jobs without purpose until his luck changed at Urban Brew Studios in Randburg because of perseverance.
Originally from Durban, Naidoo said he always knew that he was meant for more. “Those eight years of my life was definitely not easy and taught me about everything I wasn’t designed to do. It was tough coming out of my matric year with no qualification but I learnt very quickly that this meant I was now unemployed and was willing to work any decent job I could find.”
“In 2005, I was going from interview to interview, living with my sister and I happened to use a route via Randburg. I drove past Urban Brew Studios and I don’t know how, but something in me knew that there was hope in that building. I turned the car, went in there and I never looked back.”
The first television show he worked on was Run the Adventure in 2005 with Trevor Noah. He volunteered for three months while travelling the country learning and experiencing the ins and outs of the television industry. Six months into the TV show, he worked his way into producing at the studios.
Naidoo worked for Urban Brew Studios for about two years on popular TV shows like 3Talk on SABC 3 and Live Music Show on SABC 1. “I discovered that I was born to become a producer and after those two years I moved to Cape Town in 2007 to try radio for a while. Since the end of 2007, I have been an independent filmmaker.”
“When I first established the idea of my own company and started it, I looked back and thought of how I came from nothing and yet I was able to make it, realising that my kind of story is unique. I started Becoming Legacy [his company] because I love to tell other people’s stories which is what I did from 2014.”
In 2015, Naidoo travelled to the Cannes Film Festival with a short film, The Beginning, (produced by Naidoo, Tumisho Masha and Bradley Katzen) which was selected to contend in the short film category. The second film offering from Naidoo’s company 33 Films was The Stick Up which aired on Mzansi Bioskop DSTV channel 164 and won a South African Film and Television Award (Safta) for a best made-for-TV movie in 2017.
Naidoo continues to inspire the youth by visiting schools such as Cosmo City Secondary School and Alexander Secondary School with his youth empowerment initiative and focusing on motivating, inspiring and mentoring young leaders of tomorrow.
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