Film and digital media content speaker series comes to Tampa

With hopes of reaching both emerging and working film and digital media content creators, Film Tampa Bay and Semkhor have teamed up to bring nationally acclaimed professional filmmakers to Tampa Bay in a speaker series that will continue for at least a year. In these free lectures, upcoming filmmakers can learn new skills and get a taste of what the industry is like to boost Tampa’s filmmaking production.

“David Shapiro, Semkhor’s founder, is the originator of this idea and has done it previously in Sarasota. He looked to Tampa Bay as a new partner to bring this type of speaker series to, and I embraced that idea,” says Tyler Martinolich, Executive Director of Film Tampa Bay. “We do a lot of familiarization tours. We want to bring people to our community to show what Tampa Bay really has to offer. This speaker series is a great way to expose someone to this area, including students that might work on projects that come through.”

The first speaker featured was Andy Garcia on Oct. 17, with the next lecture by Paul Schiff held on Oct. 24.

“The speaker series is for anyone and everyone. Each speaker is going to speak on something specific to them. ‘Film’ is used as ubiquitous catchall, but it can include narrative features, commercials, or social media content. There are so many facets to what this can be. We want to appeal to as many people as possible so we’re looking at anyone playing with digital media space,” Martinolich explains. “Paul Schiff is story producer scaled towards production side of this in his talk.”

For now, the speaker series will be done via Zoom, but there are plans for in-person gatherings once it is safe to do so.

To find out about more upcoming speaker series and keep up with newly listed events, visit Film Tampa Bay’s Facebook page.