As a child, Mr Waples lived in Kyabram, attended primary school and high school in Echuca and occasionally still touches base with old high-school friends to see where they are in life.
Mr Waples' documentary The City of Art tells the story of legal and illegal graffiti artists in Perth.
“I had an interest in film and TV, but being in Echuca, I guess the opportunities were quite limited in what I wanted to do,” Mr Waples said.
“It was always you had to go to the big smoke, go to Melbourne to study or something like that.
“Part of my choice to move to Perth was that my brother was here and thanks to him, I got the opportunity to go to TAFE, study filmmaking and get my qualifications.”
Since completing his diploma in film and television, Mr Waples has been dabbling in different film projects, including helping friends out on their films and shooting wedding and training videos.
He has always been interested in films, especially documentaries, which led him to make an unrelated documentary to The City of Art on popular Aussie entertainers the Four Kinsmen, for which he hopes to find a broadcaster.
“It has been an eight-year journey to complete the Four Kinsmen doco, at the end of last year,” he said.
“I then found myself stuck in a situation where no-one wants to give you a shot, unless you are an experienced filmmaker already.
“The Four Kinsmen documentary is a fantastic project, but the budget sort of blew out, so I needed to find government grants and things like that to try and make it work.
“If that doco (about the Four Kinsmen) never sees the light of day, it has been a great experience and learning along the way.”
Over his journey as a filmmaker, Mr Waples has found that to be taken seriously by the film funding bodies, you need to have two broadcast credits to your name.
“It is very hard to get government funding and grants and all that sort of hoo-ha,” he said.
“Late last year, I thought, ‘how am I going to make an opportunity to get myself known?’.”
This is when he came up with the idea to make a short documentary about graffiti culture.
“Graffiti is everywhere in Perth, I imagined there wouldn’t be much in Echuca, but especially in Perth everywhere you look, from the good, the bad, the ugly, little pieces that some people may call vandalism to nicer works of art, which may not have been approved.
“I thought it would be cool to make a doco, and from what I researched there weren't many docos of recent times that had been made in 10, maybe 15 years in Australia on the topic.
“It was a good opportunity for myself to make this project ... hopefully people will like it.”
Once he finished the documentary in May, Mr Waples wondered where it could be screened.
“I just chucked an email to SBS and within a day or so they actually emailed me back saying this is a fantastic documentary and would love to do a broadcast deal,” he said.
“I was quite excited about that, it’s fantastic.
“I have checked the TV schedules and it has popped up, and it looks pretty cool.
“This documentary is one feather in my cap, as they say, to help me get my broadcast credits.”
Mr Waples is waiting to see how this documentary goes before embarking on his next project.
He would like to do a longer version about graffiti, but looking more at the underworld, the darker side of the culture.
“Of course, one trolls into murky legal territories, when you are interviewing people that may have been charged with certain crimes or may have a colourful past,” he said.
“The City of Art is looking at that core element — just because something is created not quite legally, should it still be considered art or not?”
You can check out Wayne’s documentary The City of Art on SBS On Demand.
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