Shiona Penrake

SENIOR COPYWRITER AND FILM DIRECTOR. I help company owners humanise their brands by telling authentic, immersive stories that inspire, entertain and educate us.

Shiona has been editing since she was seven and is our main video editor. After a couple of lessons with editor Stuart Gazzard, she never looked back. From Final Cut she went on to learn Avid then Premier Pro with After Effects.

As well as editing Shiona also helps out with design, a range of tasks in development, pre-production and production. Currently she works full time as an editor at Barcroft Studios in London.

In 2012, a month after her sixteenth birthday, Shiona directed her first short film, The Paintbrush, featuring Jay Penrake as the lead, Lois Winstone as the mum and Elio Ruggieri as the dad. The film elicited a welcome mix of astonishment and praise from experienced industry professionals and has now distributed worldwide by Shorts International.

At 17 Shiona won Best Young Filmmaker Award at the Reed Short Film Competition, 2014, for the shortened version of The Paintbrush.

Through July and August 2012 Shiona was deeply involved in the making of short films The Prowler and Bunking Off. As well as helping in the art department with Photoshop, she worked as a runner on both films and then as editor.

In October 2012 Shiona was one of eighteen 16-18 year-olds to be offered a place at BFI’s Film Academy.

In April 2013, she joined 53 16-19-year-old filmmakers on the NFTS Campus course run by the BFI Film Academy. She was given the role of script supervisor on-set and co-editor in post. Her team made the film, Teach Me, about a city banker turned social worker who has to face his own anger, frustration and feelings of violence when provoked by an aggressive and manipulative teenager. The film was directed by Rabbia Hussein.

January-February 2014 Shiona was chosen to join ’25 of the most talented and committed young writers living in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to take part in an intensive residential training programme that kick-starts a career in the film industry’ – the BFI Film Academy Course Residential Programme in Screenwriting.

In 2015 she co-directed and edited short film The Stray. Her latest short film, Look Inside, has just finished and is being submitted to BAFTA-qualifying festivals around the world.