Film Courage: Is Space Waves the first feature screenplay you've written?
Spencer Whiteout: Yes, wrote it when I was 21. Before that I had only written I think a nine page
script before and so I was just like all right let's do a feature. I didn't really know what I
was doing but I think I think that's what you have to do is as a filmmakers just push yourself to do
harder things and it's kind of funny that when I was when I when the producer [Andrew Baer] and I
started this project I was like I don't know if I'm ready to make a feature and he said he
said something I'll never forget he was like dude nobody's ever ready to make their first feature
and that was great advice you know we're never ready it's just it's something that you choose to
just go for you know and as you do it you know that's that's the that's the Proving Grounds
you know and you met your producer at Biola [University] correct yeah nice you know a summer
class of photography 2017 we're the only two guys in the class and so and he was also a film major
so I'm like oh awesome you know that was great what gave you the confidence to know that you
could do this story you'd had the image in your mind for sounds like many years of the Tower yeah
what gave me the confidence to do it was just I had made like huge skateboarding
epic videos before so I had worked on a couple of skateboarding videos for a year and then one
of them was two years and both of those projects were like over an hour long so
they were they were huge projects and you know I was filming and I was the I had the vision
I was The Mastermind I'm like okay I'm going to have this for the intro and then I'm going to do
this and this and this and this and I've I was always gravitating towards Big projects
and so my roots as being a skateboarder growing up the videos I watched were all
about like skateboarding teams that were it was a close-knit team and they would make videos
and so then like each skater would have like a full part video part which would be like three
minutes of their skating and it would be like a very structured thing and then as the internet
continued to grow and everything that kind of full-length skate videos sort of died
down because then it became like oh Escape Warriors would just film their own part and
then just release it online and it'd be and so skateboarding became less of a community Vibe for
the skateboarding videos and that was something that really bothered me and I always wanted to
be a part of these projects where it's like oh there's a group of guys and we're all working
towards a collective goal it's not just like oh this guy's making his own video part and this
guy's making his it's like I want to bring people together for a common purpose and a common goal
and so in high school I was making these skate videos and I was always you know grabbing all
my different friends who were skaters and then a couple of my other friends who weren't skaters and
I was like hey you should jump out of a moving car for my Escape video or you should jump off
this building or we're at this one party and I was like hey I'm going to film you like go up
in front of the crowd and like rip your shirt off and stuff and like just trying to be as wild and
as fun as possible and so I would make the escape videos in high school and they were like I said
big like over an hour plus long like skateboarding epics you know and so that was always my mindset
and when I got to film school I really didn't like short films because I every time I was making a
short film I'm like well this is just going to be forgotten about or this isn't you know it's not
big enough whatever and I'm always thinking so big and so I made a handful of short films and they
went pretty well and I definitely thankful I had the opportunity to make short films and to learn
turn because I think short films are really great for Learning and experimenting and stuff but then
it came to a point where I just didn't want to make shorts and I wanted to make the big project
and so I just you know grabbed all my friends and was like hey I'm trying to make this big
movie trying to make Space Waves and just brought everyone together and yeah we didn't really know
what we were doing but we just had a dream and we pursued it and it and it worked out very happy
with it yeah did anybody say don't make your like dream project like practice on another feature
first no no one said that but people always did say don't make a feature in general it's
it's most people that tried just fail you know it's so it's so insanely hard and you know I don't
know if I would have gone through it had I known it would have been a five-year process you know
that's like just such a commitment it's so much time it's so much work it's so much money invested
so if you are going to do a feature I say like just go do the feature that you have burning deep
inside of you that you have to that you have to make you know and I always I always like to say to
write the movie you want to see within the parameters of the story you need to tell
can we talk about the beginning process of writing the screenplay
yeah the beginning process way back in 2017 was just I spent the summer kind of just reflecting
on my growing up and trying to pick out the significant moments that I felt like really
Illustrated the story so that the argument scene in Space Waves that was a moment that kind of
I didn't necessarily have that argument with that friend face to face but all of the things said and
done in that scene were just kind of a collection of thoughts and feelings and things that we had
gone through and so I was like oh this feeling or this thing that he said or I said whatever
I'm going to grab all these different pieces try to fit them together in this scene or that scene
and then also it was just like you know the first half of Space Waves is all about just the fun and
the adventures and stuff and so I figured okay let me just reach back into my mind and grab
some of the fun and the adventures that me and my friends had while growing up and so I would
put those into the film and it was also just one of those things where it's like hey what do I want
to see how about we have a flash mob incident or how about we have the characters wandering through
the forest looking for a phoenix statue and then it ends up being a chicken and like just kind of
being fun and being random and the producer and I would just bounce wild ideas off of each other
and this was this was a movie that thrived on just yeah the wildness and the randomness and just it's
got a very like specific brand of comedy and just a brand of fun that that we really that we really
like so you were in college at Biola yeah 2017. did you miss home is that what tied you thinking
about high school no well I'm a very nostalgic person so I think about the past a lot whether
that be to like to analyze it and to learn and grow from it or because there's just kind of a
comfort in the past because it's known whereas the future is just completely unknown but like
in the past there's a lot of beautiful memories there's a lot of painful memories and there's
just a lot to digest there and I'm a I'm a very sentimental person so I like to take a
lot of photos take a lot of videos journal and all that kind of stuff how did you structure
the writing of the movie so the way I structured the movie was that I wanted the first half to be
more of the comedy side because Space Waves is like a comedy drama so the first half is very
comedic very fun it's all daytime and then the second half is very dramatic and Moody and it's
all night time and kind of the fun isn't at nearly as present and so that juxtaposition really serves
the movie well because the first half has so much content of like the podcast and all this explosive
energy and the pacing is really fast and there's just all this stuff going on and like constant you
know funny one-liners and just a lot of jokes and a lot of things happening kind of Rapid Fire and
then the second half there's a real absent there's a real absence of the podcast and so you feel that
absence and so then it's just kind of Marvin the main character on his own dealing with things and
it's like oh well where's his best friend Joey where's the podcast it's not really there anymore
so who is he and what is he without the pot podcast and without his best friend and so another
thing we did was put a bunch of podcast narrations in the first half of the film so as the scenes are
happening and stuff you'll hear the Space Waves podcast just kind of overlaid over some of the
scenes and stuff and so then like I said the second half of the movie that that is totally
gone and so it really is a big contrast and so the second half of the movie feels much different than
the first half and I think that really just helps Drive the point home and helps us communicate the
message better that like what do you do once you lose your best friend because it really is such a
different it's such a different vibe you know the first half to the second half and and his purpose
too right yeah because the podcast stops yeah I don't want to give spoilers away yeah it's it's
it's you know halfway through the film the podcast does stop and so
that is the main kind of one of the main themes in the film it's like what do you do when your
friends are going separate ways and the thing you worked for and you know poured your life into is
no more or it's at a standstill or it's at a pause you know who are you then and so the
main character Marvin just had his whole identity wrapped up in the podcast and in his friendship
with Joey and when that's not going right and that's not nearly as present in his life anymore
yeah he's got a lot of thinking to do and he's got a lot of pain that he's dealing with and so the
second half of the film really just goes through and shows all of that all of the characters arcs
tried to yeah I think so Duke Duke Skylander has a really great Arc he's the he's the third character
and he's a character that you don't necessarily think has much depth to him because he's very much
kind of the the comedic relief and he's kind of the you know the Third Wheel in the Buddy comedy
whatever and so he's making his his magnum opus like skate video called hourglass existence and
at the beginning of the film you just think oh this guy is you know he's just he's just this
wild ridiculous character but then in the second half of the film you see that he's actually very
insecure and he's like oh man I'm not sure if anyone's going to come to my film Premiere I don't
even know if my film is good enough and stuff and then Marvin the main character is able to
come in and be a good friend to Duke you know and so he's able to be that good friend even though he
feels like he doesn't have that good friend to his own life so we try to give we tried to give
it a character Arc to Duke and we tried to give character arcs to all the different characters but
yeah it's kind of a tough Balancing Act just in general but I think we did pretty well with that.