Film Courage: Spencer, you made Space Waves [movie] for fifty thousand dollars?
Spencer Whiteout, Filmmaker: Correct.
Film Courage: But you started with $10,000?
Spencer: Right.
Film Courage: Can you talk about how you raised the first ten thousand?
Spencer: Yeah, so the first ten thousand was really just
a lot of asking friends and family and calling up different people and connections. We did an
Indiegogo fundraising campaign that went all right but we didn't want to we didn't want to settle and
we're like no we need 10K to like do this film so we ended up doing like a garage sale as well which
was really cool and that brought in close to a thousand dollars and we just had people donate
stuff and then we set up this big garage sale and sold a bunch of stuff and so that helped and we
just tried to get creative and then Andrew who's the producer him and I both put in money ourselves
and so it was just it was just a big combination of things had Andrew ever made a film before
he had made just short films just same as same as me so you were I think he had made I think he had
made kind of a 20 or 30 minute short film and then he had done a longer documentary back in
high school as well a part of I guess high school project but this was both of our first features
so with the first 10 000 what was the hardest hurdle to get over to
raise that money like where did the bulk of that 10 000 come from the Indiegogo
not it didn't necessarily come from the Indiegogo I think it I think the bulk of it came from our
parents and grandparents and like those closest to us who donated maybe a few thousand each so
that was probably where most of it came from so yeah just people that really believed in us and
that have been in our corner corner since since day one and did you have to sit them down and
convince them or they knew this was something you were planning to do with or without them
definitely the latter they especially I can just speak for my parents like they know whenever I put
my put my focus and attention on something I'm going to follow through and do it so
yeah they were supportive from the beginning did they say you sure you want to do this or
they were just like no we're behind you they can't really convince me they're just kind of
like oh well Spencer's going to do his thing so yeah great parents though love you Mom and
Dad what did you find is the most effective way to ask for money yeah I that's hard it's really
hard there's no easy way I don't think to ask for money but I think I think the best way to do it
is to share the vision for the film first and share what's the message why are you doing this
that's the most important thing if it's just oh I want to make a cool movie that's okay that's
one thing but if you're saying I want to tell this story and I want to impact people on I want
to influence people and I want to just I have something to say to the world that's a lot more
enticing of an idea and that's something that more people can get behind and that's something that
more people will actually give you their money for because they believe in you they believe in
the message and if you're aligned on that then you can partner up and it's going to go well
how much money did you have on the first day of production for Space Waves I think it was
like nine thousand dollars nine or ten thousand yeah and while you were filming on that first day
were you thinking about is this going to carry us through how or or no it was just this is the first
day we're super excited yeah we didn't really we didn't know how we were going to do it we
we're just so young Andrew [Baer, producer] was 18 and I was 22 and we did it and so
yeah it was just kind of like hey we have 10K let's hope it lasts for these next three weeks
on production but yeah we didn't really know what we what we were doing or if it was going
to work but we just walked in faith and we just we went hard every single day and we put
put our A-game into it 100 the whole way there how many days were you able to film
before that money ran out we got through the whole principal photography yeah so we got through the
18 shoot days which I think was like three weeks because we had a few we had a few break days but
we got through principal photography just barely and then after that it was just kind of doing
a lot of pickup shoots so like we'd re-shot the playground scene or we had to shoot the classroom
scene or bpb News Scene so we had some different pickups that we had to do but it was much easier
to kind of raise some money for those or prepare for those because they were spread out later it
wasn't like oh every single day we're shooting a scene like how it was on principal photography
and you're taking everybody from Southern California and you're driving how many miles
north I don't even know a lot a lot of miles yeah all the way up to NorCal [Northern California] all
the way up to Grass Valley [CA] so we took all the film equipment that Biola University let us use
so we put it all in trailer and drove up there brought our cast and crew up there our our main
forecast and then I think basically everyone else was hired from NorCal or San Francisco or
something for the other the other roles in the film where was everyone staying we were staying
in my parents house and then family friends houses so like I said my parents were super on board very
supportive and so we got to stay in their place we shot a scene in my old room that I grew up in
and my parents had friends that let us stay in their homes and so yeah I just always say
like utilize your resources and whether that be locations places to sleep places to stay whatever
and just and also just friends and family for cast members and extras and stuff it's like hey
come be in my movie and stuff so just always play to your strengths and utilize any resources you
have that's what I would say that probably saved you a ton of money then yes it did right because
we didn't pay for hardly any locations and Space Waves we only paid for a couple and that's that's
the way it should be and like we were saying earlier off camera I think it's it's really
it's surprising just how many people will help you out if you just ask like hey can we film in your
driveway can we film in your little small mom and pop business it doesn't it never hurts to ask and
a lot of people will be interested and a lot of people will be excited about having their location
in a film so I always try to get every location or as many locations as I can for free and so
far it's been going good so that's part of the small town Hospitality yeah they wanted to see you
succeed but if you had done it down here probably would have been a little tougher definitely but
similar down here we were able to shoot in local connections places so like in a in a house or an
exterior or at Biola University we're able to use their Newsroom so you can still utilize
your resources even if you live in SoCal it just might be a little trickier what happened
when the money did run out oh man when the money ran out it was just Andrew the producer and I
working like working minimum wage jobs like right out of college and saving up money and then being
like okay we've got a few grand okay we're going to pay for sound design and then that's worked on
for a few months and then we save up and then okay we have another few grand that we're going to pay
for color grade and then score and so on and so that's one of the that's like the main reason the
film took so long is because we just kept running out of money and we kept having to save up money
in order to just get through the next hurdle and get through the next phase of post-production so
that was that was yeah just one of the toughest things of this whole thing was just constantly
running out of money and it really is it tests your mental fortitude being able to continue
with a project when you're halfway in you're in the thick of it and yeah some of it's done it's
shot or sound design is done but you have all these other steps that are not done yet it can
be really discouraging and really hard and for for us as well we had our main hard drive fail which
was devastating and we thought we had everything backed up on a backup drive but we were missing
one scene and so we had to spend the money that we were going to spend on like our sound design like
a few thousand dollars we had to spend that money on getting the main hard drive repaired so that
set us back like I don't even know how many months like three or six months or something because then
we had to save up again and then put the money in to get the next phase of sound done or whatever
so there are things like that that'll happen that you have to be aware of and that you have to just
get through in every film there's going to be challenges like that at least you could Salvage
it yes that's yeah wow that's good yeah because you had the bulk of it you said the 18 days we
were pretty much in the can okay and then just one scene was hadn't been backed up and we were like
okay either we reshoot it but that wasn't really viable or we have to pay to get the hard drive
recovered and so we ended up doing that how did you raise the additional forty thousand
like I said it was just a lot of it was mostly a lot of self-funding and then
I think we ran yeah we ran a second Indiegogo campaign once we had shot like principal
photography so people could see clips from the film which was cool and so that helped
a lot it's like hey this is what the film could look like here's some shots from it
and people get on a moving train more than they do I I stopped to train so people were excited
about it people gave money to us but yeah most of it was just self-funded with Andrew the producer
and myself and then we had some investors come on at the very end for probably a total of 10K
split up between a few different people and so they have they have equity in the film
and then they'll get they'll get paid out as well as Andrew and I
what would you say to someone who says you can't make a feature film for ten thousand dollars
uh they're just a hater you can do it anyone can do it I think it's also just a question of how
good is the movie going to be with your limited budget so we started with 10K and we were doing
pretty well but it was one of those things where we weren't happy with it and so we took the extra
time to reshoot some things to re-edit some things we scrapped eight months of sound design because
the first sound designer we worked with just it just wasn't working and so we said we're not going
to settle we're not going to compromise so we lost all that work we went and hired someone else
and so that that's the thing it's like you can make a movie for very cheap and it's it'll depend
on how well it turns out or whatever it's not like more money means a better movie but it can
mean a better movie and in our case we wanted to spend as little as possible and 50k was about how
much it cost for us to spend as little as possible while making the best movie that we could you had
a great camera package too correct yes yeah what did you shoot on it's funny because the camera
was like worth our entire budget I think we shot on the red epic dragon and so that was like a 50
000 camera or whatever so that definitely helped being able to use our film schools equipment
the DP was someone that you also knew from school yep the DP Connor Griffin was our
classmate and he's an amazing DP and we we owe him a lot and he did he did such a great job
him and our gaffer and that's another thing I say is like always try to make sure you have a
good gaffer and good DP because that that is such a deciding factor on how good your film
looks because if you just have blank walls or you don't have dynamic shadows and stuff
in frame it's going to look cheap it's going to look student film so really take your lighting
and camera work seriously and also just just be smart about how you're shooting so shoot your
exteriors in the morning light and in the evening line then shoot your Interiors in the daytime
and things things like that basically just try to be smart with it.