Ellen Windemuth is the founder and joint CEO of the company. She founded Off the Fence in 1994 after working for Fremantle and Atlantis. Under her leadership the company acquired, produced and co-produced over 6,000 hours of content. Ellen is a seasoned Executive Producer and Distributor, and has produced over 500 hours to date herself. She is the Chair of the Jackson Hole Film Festival Board and is also a recipient of Wildscreen’s Christopher Parson’s Outstanding Achievement Awards 2018. Ellen is active in conservation and land development, has three children and a great passion for the outdoors.
Allison joined Off the Fence at the beginning of June 2006. She began her television career at Survival Anglia Ltd. in 1998 after gaining her doctorate in human evolution from Cambridge University. She then went on to develop and produce natural history and science documentaries for Channel 4, ITV and TLC before moving to Granada TV in Bristol. At Granada she developed, produced and directed a wide range of award winning documentaries for Discovery, TLC, National Geographic, Animal Planet, and Five.
Karen joined Off the Fence in March 2007, having worked in television since 1992 for Partridge Films/United Wildlife/Granada Wild. She has worked on a wide range of natural history and factual programmes for a variety of broadcasters including ITV, National Geographic, PBS, Discovery, Animal Planet, BBC, Channel 4, the History Channel & MTV. Karen is based in the Bristol office and is responsible for overseeing all of Off the Fence’s programme output in Bristol, Amsterdam, Mainz and Cape Town.
Andrew joined Off the Fence in 2010 as Series Producer for the incredibly successful Stan Lee's Superhumans. Since then he has gone on to oversee more than 50 hours of factual programming for OTF across the US market (History, H2, The Weather Channel) including three series of Stan Lee's Superhumans, Megafactories, Wildest Arctic, the award-winning Freaks Of Nature and has recently branched out into natural history and anthropology films.
Andrew has over 15 years experience in the television industry, and has worked across a wide variety of genres for all UK broadcasters including BBC, ITV, and Sky. Andrew established his own production company in 2004, producing a number of high-rating, award-winning series, with strong global sales.
Leila Monks joined Off the Fence in November 2019. She has experience in both the creative and commercial parts of the industry. In 2015 she co-founded Antidote Productions which produced 22 hours of critically acclaimed content in a 4.5 year period for major broadcasters in the UK and North America including BBC One, BBC Three, Channel Four, National Geographic, Blue Ant Media and Smithsonian Channel all of which Leila executive produced or directed. Previous to this she was Director of factual distributor, TVF International for 5 years where she grew the revenue of the business by an average of 30% year on year. She graduated with a BSc in Anthropology from University College London and her role is to help grow OTF's production slate through original commissions and co-productions.
Celine began her career at Cowboy Films in London, a producer of music videos, commercials and feature films before making the move to BBC Scotland where she worked for four years with the Head of Broadcast and the Commissioning Editor. In 2002 she moved to Granada Bristol, helping to develop, and produce both popular and specialist factual documentaries for US and UK terrestrial broadcasters. In October 2006 Celine joined the Off the Fence Bristol office and is involved in the development and production of a number of projects for broadcasters.
Stuart joined Off the Fence in 2010 helping to develop our in-house post production department. Initially involved with the setup and design, Stuart has become a key point of contact for staff within the company network. He provides technical knowledge to deliver long form programming to our international clients and also liases with broadcasters and suppliers globally. Prior to Off the Fence, Stuart was co-owner at Finalize Media and worked at Granada Television.
Jon joined Off the Fence as a post production manager in 2010. He has extensive industry experience, having worked within post production for 20 years, including 5 years with Granada / ITV.
As part of the online team, Jon is responsible for colour grading a wide variety of programmes, as well as ensuring projects run smoothly for final delivery to broadcasters such as BBC, Channel 4, Discovery, History and NHK.
Tom joined Off the Fence after working for six years as a scuba diving instructor and underwater cameraman. During this time he built up years of experience filming in some of the best diving environments in the world including The Red Sea, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Palau. His footage has been recognised by National Geographic and he has written articles for a number of diving magazines and charities, notably Sport Diver, Blue and Pangea Seed.
Starting out as an Edit Assistant at Off the Fence, Tom developed a key understanding of Off the Fence’s expansive filmography after time spent handling media from productions both past and present. Now Archive Manager, Tom is responsible for managing Off the Fence’s Stock Footage Library as well as lending his underwater expertise to productions when needed.
Having graduated with a degree in Film Studies, Holly started her career in 2006 at Aardman Animations in Bristol working on various projects in both the commercials and broadcast departments. Since then she has worked for numerous production companies in Bristol, Birmingham and London and on various series for BBC, Channel 4, Discovery. Holly has now joined Off the Fence to work on Destination Wild for National Geographic.
Amy started her career at Granada TV in Bristol and later on at the BBC's Natural History Unit, working on projects such as 'The Nile' and 'Planet Earth'. As she moved into production management, she worked for a number of independent production companies working on a variety of drama reconstruction and factual documentaries for the BBC, Discovery, History Channel, C4 and most recently ITV's obs doc 'National Treasures' with Michael Buerk for RDF. Amy joined OTF at the beginning of 2014.
Paul first joined Off the Fence as a production assistant after graduating from Falmouth University with a degree in Marine & Natural History Photography. After gaining valuable experience working on several projects Paul is now a researcher on National Geographic’s three part series ‘Colombia: Untamed Heart’.
Philipe is the Edit Assistant for the production team, charged with the technical aspect of project workflow and media management. After receiving a degree in audio production and specialising in sound design, Philipe worked in audio post production for TV advertising and short films within Europe before interning and later joining Off the Fence full time in 2015.
Ed is the dedicated researcher for Off the Fence, Amsterdam. He primarily works in all aspects of development but also assists with the production process and with graphic design. After graduating with a BA (hons) degree in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Southampton, Ed worked as a news researcher and writer in the UK before joining Off the Fence in 2015.
