The Renegades

Alan Hayling

Editorial Director

Prior to forming Renegade Pictures Alan Hayling was Head of Documentaries at the BBC. At the BBC, he was responsible for a wide range of factual programmes shown across all the BBC’s television channels. Whilst there he and Jon Rowlands co-created Mischief a populist six part investigative series for BBC3 and Alan executive produced the multi-awarding winning documentary Children of Beslan. Previously Alan was Editorial Director at Mentorn, one of the UK’s largest producers of factual programmes. There he expanded its range of programming by launching a science department, a factual drama department and factual entertainment group. He initiated international formats including "Britain’s Worst Driver", the reality show "Paradise Hotel" for Fox, and drama-documentaries like "The Hamburg Cell" for Channel 4 and HBO. Prior to Mentorn Alan spent ten years as a Commissioning Editor for Documentaries at Channel 4. Whilst there he created and commissioned the strands "Secret History" and "Secret Lives", "Undercover Britain" and a range of documentary series and single films. He was the Channel 4 executive in charge of work by some of top filmmakers in the field including Errol Morris’s "Dr Death", Phil Agland’s "Shanghai Vice" and Molly Dineen’s film "Geri", Michael Moore’s series "The Awful Truth" and commissioned his hit film "Bowling for Columbine".

Jon Rowlands

Creative Director

Just prior to joining Renegade exec. produced his third "Sport Relief" for BBC One and consulted for Live 8. Up until 2005 he was Head of Development for BBC Factual, where he developed and sold "The Royal Photographer" (BBC 1), "Last Man Standing" (BBC 3 + Discovery US), "Perfection" (BBC 2), "Building The Dream" (BBC 2), "Holidays at Home" (BBC 1) and "Mischief" (BBC 3). Before that he was Head of Development for BBC Sport where in he co-devised "Sport Relief". Before getting serious Jon produced four "Comic Relief"s (BBC 1), "The 11 O’Clock Show" (C4), "Lenny Henry" (BBC 1), "The Cram" (BBC 2) and "Alexei Sayle" (BBC 2).

Alex Cooke

Director

Prior to setting up Renegade Pictures Alex Cooke directed "United Gates Of America" for the BBC, a one hour documentary about race and immigration inside one of California’s largest gated community. In 2005 she initiated and produced a ten part series for Discovery Times, "Only In America", immersing herself in subcultures across the US. Collaborating with NY Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Charlie LeDuff, she directed four of the shows including "Gay Rodeo" – a film about rural gay cowboys in the Bible Belt, (winner of the GLAD Award 2006) "Country Preachers" about independent Pentecostal pastors and serpent handlers in the Appalachia , "The Real 8 Mile" about young kids in Detroit and "Fight Club" about a bike gang who conduct fight clubs in Oakland California. In 2004 Alex Cooke’s made her debut feature documentary "How Arnold Won The West", a political satire following Arnold Schwarzenegger on the campaign trail to become Governor. The film was picked up for theatrical distribution in France, Italy, Austria, England, and DVD release in Japan, Australia and the United States. Before directing Alex was as an editor and producer, for Channel 4 and the BBC and she was the programmer of Sheffield International Documentary Festival from 1997 to 2001. From 1991 to 1993 she was a founder member and Managing Director of The Big Issue a newspaper an initiative for the homeless in London.

Ed Nissen

Managing Director

Prior to joining Renegade in 2010, Ed worked as Head of Production for Mentorn Media-owned Folio where he oversaw their entire output of mainly observational programming, including Traffic Cops (BBC1), Half-Ton Hospital (ITV1), Asbo Fever (Sky ONE) and Soho Blues (Five) with output typically reaching some thirty or more primetime hours per annum. Ed was also Executive in Charge of Production for Mentorn USA, responsible for network reality shows Paradise Hotel and Forever Eden (Fox) as well as Work Out and Chef Academy (Bravo). Ed takes on the responsibility of the Managing Director role from Alex Cooke.

Holly Davies

Head of Development

Holly joined Renegade as Head of Development in March 2010. She began her development career as a researcher at Lion Television working primarily in entertainment development, before moving onwards and upwards to broaden her production and development experience at a number of indies including ITN, Objective and Cactus. Before specialising solely in development, Holly worked on a wide range of productions, spanning shiny floor entertainment, live magazine shows, fact ent series through to documentaries. In early 2008 she was employed by Dragonfly as a Development Producer before leaving to join the BBC Factual Entertainment Development Team as a Producer in 2009. Throughout the course of her career she has created and co-developed a diverse range of successful documentaries and formats for the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, Channel 5, National Geographic and RTE. Successes include “The Hairy Biker’s Family Cook Off” (BBC Two); “The World’s…and Me” series (Channel 4); “How Woolworths Became Wellworths” (BBC One); “Gok Wan: Too Fat Too Young” (Channel 4); “The Shrinks” (RTE – winner for best factual format at Prix Jeunesse 2010); “Mission Beach USA” (BBC Switch) and “The Cannibal That Walked Free” (Channel 5).

Maria Livesey

Head of Production

Maria has over 20 years experience in broadcast television the majority of which has been spent working on a wide-range of UK and international programming including documentary, factual, music and science as producer, line producer, production manager. She worked for 7 years directly with broadcasters both as Programme Finance Manager in Science & Education at Channel 4 and at Discovery Channel where she was Acting Director of Production Management based in London working across all the Discovery Networks in the US, UK, Europe and Asia before she headed off to take up the role as Director of Production at Parthenon Entertainment until April 2006 when she was offered the role of Head of Production for Renegade Pictures.

Fiona Herson

Deputy Head of Production

Fiona Herson is the Deputy Head of Production for Renegade Pictures, having joined the team in March 2007. Working across Renegade’s output, she is responsible for guiding her teams from pre-production through to delivery, in addition to budgeting, scheduling and working with broadcasters throughout the world.The range of Fiona’s portfolio extends from fast turnaround current affairs to factual entertainment series, from multi-million budget HD travel films to low budget human interest obs docs. Prior to joining the company, Fiona worked at Mentorn for eight years as a senior production manager.

Annabel New

Production Coordinator

After training as a dancer and glass artist, Annabel started work in television for Scarlet Television working as a Archive Researcher on numerous Factual/Entertainment based documentaries. In 2006 she joined the fledgling Renegade Pictures as a Production Coordinator. She has continued in this role, working on international projects such as "The Boys from Baghdad High" for BBC2 and "Vegas Comes to China" for National Geographic International.