That's so

BOLD | CREATIVE | ON-TREND

Zig Zag Productions is one of the UK’s foremost independent television production companies formed in 1999 by Danny Fenton.

Zig Zag has produced over 1000 hours of non scripted programming and has grown to become an internationally recognised, respected and award winning television producer both in the UK, USA and internationally. Zig Zag has produced programming for broadcasters including BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Five, TLC, MTV, Fox, National Geographic, Discovery, OWN, Logo and Syfy. The company has also won numerous awards including the Rose D’or for Best Format.

Zig Zag was recently voted 6th in the Televisual top UK indies survey. Also rated 10th top sports producer, 7th top factual producer, and 9th in the top specialist factual producers in the most recent Broadcast Indie Survey and is consistently listed in the Realscreen Global 200 Top Independent Production Companies.

Meet the Team

Danny Fenton

CEO

Danny Fenton is the C.E.O of Zig Zag Productions and has overseen the launch of Zig Zag offices in New York, Manchester. He Executive Produces all Zig Zag content.

He is also the founder of NIPA (New Independent Producers Alliance).

Danny is a regular speaker at the following conferences:- Sheffield Documentary Festival, EBU Factual Entertainment Conference, Realscreen, The Format Convention. As an experienced judge Danny is often asked to judge Broadcast, RTS and Bafta award ceremonies.

Matt Graff

Managing Director

Matt manages all Commercial opportunities, off-air rights exploitation and the management and creation of new content for digital platforms such as Zig Zag’s YouTube channels.

Matt has worked as a New Business Executive, Branded Content Agent, Senior Director at Viacom International Media Networks, overseen the content output of the CEEMEA music brands, and commissioned content for MTV International.

Prior to that, he was Head of Production & Relationship Manager at MTV Networks Internationals Emerging Markets.

Mia Freedman

COO

Mia is one of Zig Zag’s longest serving employees and has been an integral part of the company’s senior management team for the last 20 years, fulfilling a number of different roles.

Mia now runs the sales and distribution arm of Zig Zag’s impressive back catalogue.

Sally Powdrell

Accountant

Sally spent 3 years at a New Zealand based accountancy firm Nesbitt, Scott & Williams before moving to the UK where she spent 9 years at the BBC working in the Genre Commissioning accounts team.

After a brief stint in the Business Service industry Sally returned to the TV industry when she joined Zig Zag in 2005.

Sally has become an integral part of the Zig Zag team taking on greater responsibilities and running the day to day management accounts and cash flow forecasts.

Andy Scott

Head of Entertainment

Andy started his career at BBC Manchester’s Youth Entertainment & Features department, working with Dennis Pennis and setting the tone for what has been a fun-packed career.

Seminal shows Andy has worked on include Eurotrash, Banzai, and the 11 O’Clock Show, producing material for Iain Lee, Ricky Gervais, and Sacha Baron Cohen.

After spells with Objective Productions, as the showrunner of first series of long-running hit The Real Hustle, and global science/magic format Breaking Magic for Discovery, and Cineflix, creating hit series Urban Legends for SyFychannel, Andy joined ITV Studios. There he created Trickedwhich was a global hidden camera/magic prank format, sold all over the world.

Denis Karam

Head of Archive

After a long spell with a Swiss based company as Int. TV Marketing and Advertising Manager on the F1 sponsorship, as well as a short spell with a few Indie production companies, Denis joined Zig Zag Productions in 2005 as an archivist, going onto become Head of Archive. In 2012 Denis was honoured with the FOCAL International Award for the Best Archivist of the Year.

Denis is part of the Training Committee at the Federation of Commercial Audio-Visual Libraries in London as well as an occasional archive expert guest speaker and panellist at Westminster University, FOCAL Annual Footage Training Week and Broadcast TECH events.

Sarah McQueen

Head of Production

Sarah supervises and supports the company's production management team and is responsible for the successful implementation of our productions, ensuring that they are carried out safely and on budget. She also does the scheduling and budgeting for all of Zig Zag's output.

Sarah has 18 years industry experience. She started her career at TalkBack Thames on The Apprentice, and worked at Raw TV before spending 11 years with Zig Zag. After an extended period of maternity leave, she worked for Naked Freemantle, Windfall Films and GTV Docs, before returning to Zig Zag again. Throughout her career she has worked on a wide range of documentary, factual and entertainment programming.

Sarah has also spent periods working on US productions in both New York and Los Angeles

David Arrowsmith

Director of Development

In nearly 20 years in factual TV development David has devised and developed hundreds of hours of commissioned UK and international content across the full spectrum of unscripted programming - including programmes that have won awards from BAFTA, RTS, Broadcast and have even been Nobel Peace Prize nominated.

Starting out in Manchester (including working at the BBC and ITV Granada) he eventually moved back to London and a role at ITN Productions. Next, he founded Channel 5's in-house production department, growing it from nothing into a £10m/100hrs a year business. Senior creative roles at October Films, DSP and OSF followed.

Career highlights include the Dan Jones series' Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty and Britain's Bloody Crown, the BAFTA-winning Cruising with Jane McDonald and the extreme fact-ent format Tribal Teens.