Jen Miller - Co-founder
1967-2023
Jen was a filmmaker whose career took her from Hollywood blockbusters to independent cinema. Cutting her teeth on "Forrest Gump", Jen’s subsequent inauguration in the film business was producing a feature film for MGM, on which she also served as Music Supervisor and Creative Director for the publicity campaign, overseeing key art one-sheet and trailer production. She was nominated for a Key Art Award as Copywriter and Creative Director for her efforts.
Over the next several years, Jen directed and produced music videos for MTV through her own production company. As a music supervisor she put together the soundtracks for several feature films for Miramax and MGM films and also free-lanced, producing music for films, commercials, trailers and TV series. As a screenwriter, her screenplays won honors in the Sundance writing program and have been optioned and produced by companies such as Columbia Tristar and Stormworks entertainment.
Jen's first novel “Billy Bones” was a semifinalist in the 2011 Amazon Next Great Novel contest in which publishers proclaimed
"This is great stuff! ... Whatever the nature of the story unfolding, I am willing to follow".
Jen co-founded Horsefly Films with filmmaker Sophie Pegrum. Together they produced the critically- acclaimed documentary “Path to Glory” and the ongoing series of documentary films under their Rare Equine Trust banner.
Jen worked with Ojai Youth Opera to bring their projects to colorful life and also photographed productions, local graduates and family to create beautiful, memorable portraits.
Sophie Dia Pegrum - Co-founder
Sophie’s directorial debut “Dogstar” was made with a band of renegade filmmakers in Los Angeles, including AFI graduate DP Jaime Reynoso. She had a crash course in filmmaking, and she has never looked back. Critics praised the film “Dogstar” saying “There is a lilting grace to this low-budget indie". "Director Sophie Pegrum has a good eye for sensuous detail” and “This well-crafted, winsome fairy tale by writer-director Sophie Pegrum has an otherworldly quality reminiscent of Australian director Jane Campion. Definitely a new voice in danger of slipping beneath everyone's radar. “
She continued to deploy her skills as a writer and cinematographer while simultaneously working as a producer and video editor on various documentaries and commercials. As a writer: “Matadora”, a story about a female bullfighter; “My Best Friend Joe” for one of Elvis’s longtime friends and '“The King is Dead” - a film about an Elvis impersonator. “Billy Bones”, penned with Jen Miller won Scriptapalooza, a renowned screenwriting competition.
She went to the Antarctic on a National Science Foundation grant as documentary cinematographer with a team of artists. She directed and shot ”77 Below” about renowned artist Lita Albuquerque and her unprecedented sculptural installation on the Ross Ice Shelf. Later Sophie traveled to the North Pole as the filmmaker and photographer in residence on Russian Icebreaker, Yamal, documenting the second half of Lita’s global artistic endeavor.
SInce, Sophie co-directed and lensed the award winning documentaries "Daughters of the Curved Moon", “Pink Tiffany” and “Rubina by Night” shot in remote villages in West Nepal and in the bustling city of Kathmandu. SHe also made “Talking to the Air” and “Wings of Kyrgyzstan”.
In 2022 she was awarded a Fulbright National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship and spent 10 months in Kyrgyzstan making a film about the women of the Kyrgyz Space Program.
III WEBSITE - Sophie Dia Pegrum III