SFF TALKS: Filming in Florida

A FREE talk with Florida’s filmmakers and film experts about the future of filming in the Sunshine State. Are incentives coming?

The panel is moderated by IndieWire digital director Christian Blauvelt, featuring Film Tampa Bay film commissioner Tyler Martinolich, producer Jerry Chambless, and director/producer Kim A. Snyder.

More on the guests:

Tyler Martinolich

film commissioner, Film Tampa Bay

Tyler Martinolich is the Director and Film Commissioner at Film Tampa Bay, overseeing film and digital media projects in Hillsborough County. With an MFA in Film Business and Production from SCAD and 20+ years in the industry, he has contributed to films like Sunlight Jr., The Infiltrator, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. He mentors aspiring filmmakers at institutions like the University of Tampa. Tyler lives in Odessa, Florida, with his partner, her two children, and their three Pomeranians: Peekaboo, Gizzmo, and Mr. Bear.

Jerry Chambless

producer/owner of Illum Productions

Jerry Chambless has over 20 years of experience in the arts and entertainment industry as an award-winning producer, writer, director, creative director, and animator. He began his career in advertising with agencies like Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi and worked with General Electric in the industrial sector. In the late 90s, he joined Calabash Animation Studios, collaborating with clients like General Mills, Brach’s, and Starkist earning an Academy Award nomination for a studio short. Returning to Sarasota in the early 2000s, Jerry focused on directing live-action narratives and branded content like the Growing Garden, No Fear and Drawn to the Broken. He has worked with independent directors producing projects like Bridge to the Other Side, Surviving Lunch, and Beautiful Noise pushing narratives that make an inclusive difference. In addition to his professional work, Jerry led the IB film program at Riverview High School in Sarasota, expanding it to the only 3-year program worldwide, and taught Film as an adjunct professor at Ringling College of Art & Design for over a decade. Jerry also mentors’ students on professional productions.

Christian Blauvelt

digital director at IndieWire

Christian Blauvelt is the Digital Director of IndieWire, involved in running all site operations from the Product side to Editorial, where he top edits the News team, which is composed of his hires. He also oversees IndieWire’s evergreen and list strategy.

The site’s overall health is Blauvelt’s responsibility, and he manages staffers on both coasts, while overseeing editorial standards, traffic targets, and other key metrics. He is also the primary editorial supervisor of sponsorship deliverables not being steered by IndieWire’s Special Projects team, and he manages the rollout of sponsored editorial from Sundance, the site’s own live media, and other partnership initiatives, as well as managing the freelance budget. He has

moderated discussions at IndieWire’s Consider This Brunch event and is a regular interviewer of filmmakers and their casts at the IndieWire Studio, building off years of experience as a moderator of post-screening Q&As for BAFTA and SAG-AFTRA and as host of panels at SXSW and San Diego Comic-Con.

He is based in the Tampa Bay area, where he was born and raised, having returned after 12 years in New York City. He’s the author of books including “Hollywood Victory,” the story of how the American film industry contributed to the war effort during World War II, for Hachette’s Running Press imprint. A specialist in film history, he won a 2021 Southern California Journalism Award for his obituary of Sean Connery, and has appeared on TCM multiple times as a guest programmer. A graduate of the Radio/TV/Film program at Northwestern University, Blauvelt launched his SF career at Entertainment Weekly before then spending five years as Deputy Editor of BBC Culture. He loves the films of Baz Luhrmann, Terence Davies, and Jia Zhangke, is a Trekkie, will always defend Anne Heche, and he’s pretty much guaranteed to love any movie set in Florida or from the 1940s.

Kim A. Snyder

Director/Producer

Peabody Award-winning Kim A. Snyder’s latest feature documentary, The Librarians will made its World Premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. 

Her short documentary, Death By Numbers was nominated in the Best Documentary Short Film category for the 2025 Academy Awards®. Death By Numbers premiered at the 2024 Hamptons International Film Festival, immediately followed by the Woodstock Film Festival,  Montclair Film Festival where it won Best Documentary Short, and received an Honorable Mention at Doc NYC.

Her documentary, Us Kids premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, followed by SXSW, Sheffield, and Full Frame, where it received the Kathleen Edwards Bryan Human Rights Award and 14 subsequent festival awards. Prior she directed the Peabody award-winning documentary Newtown, which also premiered in the US Competition at Sundance 2016.  Newtown screened at premiere festivals worldwide and was theatrically released followed by a national broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens and Netflix.  

Her short film, Lessons from a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane, premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded Best Documentary Short followed by the DocDispatch Award at the 2018 Sheffield DocFest and a Grierson Award nomination. Lessons… is a Netflix Original. 

Snyder’s other works include the feature documentary, Welcome to Shelbyville, nationally broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2011, and over a dozen short documentaries. Kim’s award-winning directorial debut feature documentary, I Remember Me was theatrically distributed by Zeitgeist Films. In 1994, she Associate Produced the Academy Award-winning short film Trevor, which spawned The Trevor Project, a leading national not-for-profit addressing LGBTQ teen suicide. 

Kim graduated with a Masters in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and resides in New York City.