Bio

Meet Virginia.

Virginia has been working in the business of non-fiction storytelling for over 25 years, primarily working in television. Over the last couple of years while developing ideas for feature documentaries she has been freelance writing articles for various Waterford Press commercial publications. Her most recent documentary was the top rating, TVNZOne primetime “We Are One. The Mosque Attacks One Year On which went to air on the first anniversary of the attacks. Years of making primetime television means she knows how to engage an audience, or a reader, and keep them engaged.

Virginia is a skilled listener and able to pull a story out of a one-off phone call as easily as from hours of careful research and compiling of information. She can write a proposal over twenty pages, or an article in 500 words. She can hand the proposal on to someone else to bring to fruition or bring it to life herself. Virginia knows that the core of a story, whether it’s about a farm, a structural steel company, a vineyard or an autotechnician, often lies in the person behind the facts, and is skilled at intertwining both to make an easy, informative and enjoyable read.

After years of producing and/or directing and writing, primetime factual television and documentary Virginia is skilled at taking complex scientific, medical and/or technical information and reducing it to bite-size easily digestible pieces that anyone can engage with and understand. She works with the experts to make it simple but nevertheless true, and If she’s working with moving pictures she knows how and when to use graphics to make something easy to understand while adding a dimension of eye-candy at the same time.

Having trained with and worked for TVNZ for some years Virginia worked as a hired-gun director in factual television working with companies such Communicado, Raconteur, Greenstone Pictures, Gibson Group and Natural History New Zealand. She is as at home as part of a collaborative team as she is leading it. Understanding what a job needs and how to make it happen is all part of her stock-in-trade and she knows how to ask the right questions to get there. She is an excellent communicator and manager of people.

Having a double honours degree in French and English, Virginia has studied storytelling through the centuries in both languages. Having told stories on screen in lengths ranging from one minute to 90 minutes, and in print from 300 words to full length proposals, means her creative drive and pursuit of flawless execution is anchored in a realistic view of budgets, timelines, and outcomes.