“I can teach you all day long, what this means, how to do this, how to do that, where to go to get this,” said Maggie Ballard, as she shared some hard-won insights about working in the film industry with a small audience of aspiring filmmakers in Mobile. “I can teach you that all day long, but what I can’t teach you is to have passion about it.”

She could certainly share her own passion, though, and that’s just what she did as the first speaker in series of free seminars being presented by the Mobile Film Office. Experienced filmmakers like Ballard are “trying to help you learn,” said Keli Shirazi of the Mobile Film Office, introducing the recent session at GulfQuest. “And that’s the purpose of these classes, is to help you become better filmmakers, get those foots-in-the-door and make those connections to grow and get into the industry that you want to be a part of.”