Shorty Street Vax Chats
With New Zealand’s first-ever ‘Vaxathon’ taking place this weekend on ‘Super Saturday’ (16th October) – a national day of action that calls on every remaining eligible New Zealand to get their vaccination - Shortland Street is launching its own campaign ‘Shorty Street Vax Chats’ – a very real and personal selection of unscripted stories told by the actors themselves.
“This pandemic is impacting every New Zealander and getting vaccinated keeps our family and friends safe, allows us to continue to work and go back to living a life with more freedoms, but we realise it isn’t as black and white for many people,” comments Oliver Driver, Producer.
“We wanted to use Shortland Street’s voice to tell real stories. To tell our audience they are not the only ones facing fears or asking questions.”
The impact of Covid 19 has not been lost on the makers of the show. For the first time in its 29 year history – Shortland Street has had to stand the production down and stop filming twice in the last 18 months.
“I was blown away on the day we filmed these videos. These stories are not scripted, they are very real and very personal. We hope that these messages show our loyal fans that they are not alone in the way they are feeling - we wanted to engage, inform and hopefully motivate our Ferndale community to get vaccinated and help boost our nation's immunity.
And who knew that Michael Galvin, who has been worked at the Shortland Street hospital for over 20 years has a huge fear of needles?” laughs Driver.