Pitzer in the News 2006-2007 Academic Year

Jeep fun for young filmmaker
By Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan, Globe Staff | January 16, 2007

Twenty-year-old Zachary Miller is a mini-movie mogul in the making. The second-year media studies major at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., just won a 2007 Jeep Compass in a contest where entrants made a commercial that was then voted on by viewers online. Miller's piece, which runs over a minute, features several guys with a cardboard cut-out of the new SUV running through rugged terrain acting out its features. (One guy has a water bottle, another a portable stereo, and another has a big backpack .) But don't expect the Newton South grad to be tooling around in his new ride. Miller plans to sell the Jeep to pay his actors and crew -- including Massachusetts native Boa Simon, a Chapman University student who was the director of photography . With the rest of his winnings, Miller says he'll fund his next project. He got into the Jeep contest after winning a $7,500 second prize from Paramount Studios for a 15-page screenplay about HIV and AIDs and the teen community ; that award partly funded the Jeep spot. But he's savoring his win right now. "I thought, how can I show a Jeep I don't have access to, and it just evolved," said Miller, who worked on the movie "Normal Adolescent Behavior ," which was shot over the summer in Rhode Island and stars Amber Tamblyn . "I think it turned out all right. Everything came together."