Tampa Bay Has Film Schools. It Didn't Have This.

If you are an adult in Tampa Bay who wants to learn how to make a movie, you have historically had two options.

Option one: enroll in a degree program. That costs real money and several years, and it assumes your life has room for a syllabus, a parking pass and a 20-year-old lab partner named Brayden.

Option two: the internet, where a stranger in a ring light will explain three-point lighting for nine minutes, then pause to tell you about a VPN.

There has not been much in between. The St. Pete Film Workshop is betting there should be. Its first two courses begin Oct. 26 at the Lealman Exchange: six weeks, $399, about a dozen students per class, one instructor with 35 years in the business, and a hard requirement that you finish something. The Workshop's motto is "Write it. Shoot it. Finish it." Anyone who has a half-written screenplay in a desktop folder named FINAL_v3 knows which of those verbs is the hard one.

The fall pilot is two courses, each 12 evening sessions of two hours, 7 to 9 p.m. You can take one or both. Do the math and it comes out to about $17 per hour of instruction from someone who has actually done the job, which is a rate most of us have spent on worse things.

Introduction to Screenwriting meets Mondays and Wednesdays, Oct. 26 through Dec. 7. It covers dramatic structure, character and scene craft, moving from logline to outline to draft to revision. It's adapted from a full-semester university course and compressed into six weeks, so pack a snack. It ends with a table read of every student's finished short screenplay, performed by classmates or recruited actors. Bring a laptop and screenwriting software; Final Draft is preferred.

Film Production 101 meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, Oct. 27 through Dec. 8. It's a full-pipeline crash course: development, cinematography, directing actors, sound and editing. Then students crew up and make a short film together. It ends with a public screening. Bring an HD-capable camera and a laptop that can edit HD video. (A phone that shoots HD is a camera. You did not hear that from us. Ask the instructor.)

The instructor is Devin Rice, the Workshop's founder. His resume reads like he lost a bet to a career counselor: director, cinematographer, editor, colorist, composer and animator over more than 35 years. His screenplays have picked up festival honors, and three films he wrote and produced have screened at multiple festivals. He has taught screenwriting fundamentals, documentary production and motion capture as an adjunct at the University of Tampa. He holds an MFA in film from Vermont College of Fine Arts, a film-scoring certificate from Berklee College of Music and a theatre degree from Eckerd College. He has also composed music for more than 30 albums and won a ZMR Award for best contemporary instrumental album, which feels like showing off, but fine.

Both courses end with a certificate of achievement and, more to the point, a finished thing with your name on it.

Here is the part where we talk about tax policy. Stay with us; it's relevant.

Florida's statewide film incentive program ran out of money in 2016, and the Legislature has never replaced it. The 2026 session ended in March without a film incentive bill advancing, which leaves Florida as the only state in the Southeast without one. When the state did have a program, Pinellas got "Dolphin Tale." Since it ended, the big productions have gone to Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and North Carolina. Georgia, in particular, has been playing Florida in movies for years. It's very convincing. It has the humidity down.

What Pinellas has instead is a county-level incentive and a reputation for independent filmmaking. That is not nothing. But an independent film scene doesn't run on soundstages and studio money. It runs on people: locals who can write a scene that works, light a room, record clean sound, cut a story together and get it in front of an audience. You can't wait for Hollywood to train those people here. Hollywood is in Atlanta.

That's the gap the Workshop is built for. USF, the University of Tampa, Eckerd College and St. Petersburg College all offer film or video production degrees. The Workshop says it could find no local program offering focused, in-person, non-degree filmmaking instruction for adults. Its target students are hobbyists, career-changers, emerging local filmmakers and content creators who want better work for their reels. In other words: the bartender with a feature script, the paralegal who shoots weddings on weekends, the 52-year-old who finally has time. Tampa Bay is full of them. Most have never had a room to be serious in.

The address matters, too. Classes meet in the Vivarium room at the Lealman Exchange, not in downtown St. Pete. The Workshop is offering one full scholarship per course, two in all, to Lealman residents. Arts programming tends to cluster where the arts already are. Putting a film school's first classroom in Lealman, and reserving free seats for the neighbors, is a small but deliberate choice. Lealman residents: the scholarship deadline is Tuesday, Oct. 20. That's soon. Go.

And then there's the screening. Film Production 101 ends with a public screening of every student's short film. That's a new local premiere night, made by your neighbors, in your county. Film culture isn't only about who makes movies. It's also about whether there's somewhere to show them and someone in the seats.

To be clear about what this is and isn't: the Workshop is non-academic and non-accredited. There are no grades and no transcripts. The certificate marks that you finished; it is not a license, and nobody will check it at the door of a film set. No experience is required. Enrollment is open to ages 18 and up, and 17-year-olds can join with the instructor's permission.

This fall is also a pilot, and the Workshop says so plainly. The point is to test demand, tune the curriculum and build a first class of alumni. If it works, more courses and more instructors arrive in 2027, followed by weekend intensives, guest-professional workshops and one-on-one script mentorship. The long-term ambition is a regional hub for filmmaking education and a Tampa Bay filmmaker network, with critique nights, screenings and possible festival partnerships.

That's a big swing for a program whose current footprint is one room and two evening classes. But that's how scenes actually start. Not with a tax credit or a studio announcement, but with somebody renting a room, setting out chairs and telling a dozen strangers they are going to finish something by December.

If it works, by early December Lealman will have hosted a table read of a dozen new screenplays and a premiere of a dozen new short films, all made here. That's the whole argument. Tampa Bay doesn't need to wait for permission to have a film scene. It needs more people who know how to make one.

What: The St. Pete Film Workshop, fall 2026 pilot
Courses: Introduction to Screenwriting (Mon./Wed., Oct. 26–Dec. 7); Film Production 101 (Tue./Thu., Oct. 27–Dec. 8)
Time: 7–9 p.m., 12 sessions per course
Cost: $399 per course
Where: Vivarium room, Lealman Exchange, 5175 45th St. N., St. Petersburg
Who: Adults 18+ (17 with instructor permission); no experience required
Scholarships: One full scholarship per course for Lealman residents; apply by Oct. 20, decisions by end of day Oct. 21
Enroll: thestpetefilmworkshop.com
Contact: Devin Rice, contact@thestpetefilmworkshop.com, (727) 554-8652