One blood oath. One week. Ten million dollars on the line.

OVERVIEW

Los Angeles. What was once a city of dreams for striving artists is now a performative hellscape doused in matcha latte.

Which brings us to Ray and Jay:

Two broke roommates who want, more than anything, to make it in LA.

• Ray is an anxious mess. He works a dead-end job as a restaurant server, frustrated by his long-overdue dream of becoming a professional screenwriter.
• Jay is the gentle giant counterpart. A quiet hustler. The one who actually makes things happen and would rather no one notices.

Between both of them, they’ve got one terrible pitch on a bad day, zero prospects, and rent that was due last week.

That is, until a drunken night out, when fate strikes at a dive bar. They meet a man named Michael Bay (not that one), a shady producer who’s a little too charming, a little too generous, and far too interested in two nobodies.

The man named Michael Bay.

Before either of them fully clocks what’s happening, they’ve pitched a show and signed a contract in their own blood. Literally.

Congratulations! You now have one week to write a hit TV pilot. And before you tell yourself that you made it, just remember that the bill is always, eventually, due.

INSPIRATION

Atlanta’s deadpan surrealism mixed with The Studio. This is a show aimed straight at the people who work in Hollywood or simply live in LA.

The humor is one that keeps a perfectly straight face while the world quietly loses its mind at the edge of the frame. Things happen and never get explained; you fill in the blanks, and that’s the whole point. 

Because under all the absurdity: this is a show about wanting to be seen in a city that only ever rewards you for the wrong reasons.

CHARACTERS

RAY (RAYMOND) MILLER — 26

Ray thinks he’s a screenwriter the same way a homeless man holding a lottery ticket thinks he’s a millionaire. In reality, he’s a server at Chumps Chicken Emporium.

He’s meek, polite, semi-articulate. He’s certain that he’s one good idea away from making it big in the industry. He’s not.

He came to LA to study film, got talked into an English degree by his parents as a backup plan toward a “useful career,” and has spent every year since trying to prove them wrong. Keyword: trying.

To strangers, he’s easygoing and unassuming; to the few people who get close, he’s a knot of anxiety laced with impostor dread. He’ll tell you he writes for the love of the art form. Really, he’s chasing fame, success, and recognition.

JAY (JAIDEN) RAMIREZ — 27

Jay is a gentle giant who can get you whatever you need and would rather not be thanked for it. Job title? Unemployed. Functionally? An indispensable hustler, running on odd gigs, favors, and a contact list that shouldn’t exist. He’s the calm one. The guy who quietly solves the problem while everyone else panics or pontificates.

Raised hard, he was the only one of six siblings to get pushed out of the house at eighteen “to toughen up.” He still wires money home and still won’t fully commit to anything: the situationship with his ex, the apartment he never moved out of, the ambition he refuses to admit he has.

He wants to be useful without being seen, which is convenient, because being seen is the thing that scares him most.

The day he reaches for something he actually wants is the day it all starts to come apart.

MICHAEL BAY (NOT THAT ONE)

The man named Michael Bay is a producer, and that’s genuinely the most anyone can confirm about him. He’s charming in a way that makes the room slightly too warm. He’s generous well past the point where generosity makes sense. He’s competent at everything, present at exactly the right moment every time, but impossible to find when you go looking.

Nobody knows where the money comes from. Nobody knows how old he is; ask, and you’ll get a different answer, none of them reassuring. He makes the industry run; he loves the game far more than any outcome in it, and he’s somehow both completely open and a total stranger to everyone who’s ever met him.

THE DUO

Together, they’re the whole engine. Ray and Jay met when Ray needed Adderall for finals, bonded over video games, and have been a unit ever since; Ray covering most of the rent, Jay “about to move out” for several years running.

THE WORLD OF SPITBALLIN’

“Everyone wants to live in LA… or so they think.”

• Show Logic — At its spine, it’s a drama wearing surreal comedy as a coping mechanism. Genuine people are rewarded with screen time. They’re who we follow. Performative people are used as gags.

• World Logic — The social rules of this LA. Diversity is real and everywhere, and so is the performance of it: people signaling an inclusion they don’t practice. The city runs on two kinds of people: the ones genuinely trying to do good or just get by, and the ones scanning every room for what they can take.

• Texture — The specific detail that makes it unmistakably LA. A homeless man in cyberpunk Y2K clothing walking a skateboard on a leash. Industry archetypes with full conviction in their own importance. Everyone is a Don Quixote. The city is beautiful on the surface and rotting underneath.

• Humor — Uncomfortable comedy. Total conviction in absurd positions. People taking themselves too seriously without noticing their own absurdity. Exaggerated behavior that exposes what we take for granted. Surreal but always grounded, never magical. Things happen that don’t make sense and are never explained; the audience fills the gaps.

• Drama — Powerlessness. Characters trapped in situations they can’t escape. Absurd consequences for innocent acts. Elusive goals. Power disguised as generosity.

• Gravitational Center — People who want to be seen in a city that rewards them for all the wrong reasons.

LOOK AND FEEL

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Grounded naturalism is the baseline, so the surreal lands harder. Comedy comes through holding, not coverage. The strange gags live on the edges: background events nobody reacts to, the camera never pointing at the joke. Omission is deliberate: jump cuts and ellipses are a tool; LA itself is a character. Surface beauty and rot in the same frame.

LIGHT – Soft and creamy, in the register of Beef. A diffused, low-contrast key; gentle shadow roll-off instead of hard edges; warm, filmic highlights. Sources stay motivated and naturalistic.

COLOR – Saturated color across the series, but never messy, in the spirit of The Bear. The default move is a tightly limited palette with a single element allowed to pop: one saturated prop, one piece of wardrobe, one light source.

TEXTURE – While the art department does the heavy lifting, the image itself should read unmistakably 2020s, a contemporary analog-film look. Visible grain. Highlights that bloom and glow rather than clipping hard.

FRAMING – Unconventional and composed, in the Atlanta tradition. We're not beholden to conventional coverage grammar: the over-the-shoulder shot, the automatic push-in on every line. The default is wide: we sit back and let scenes play in the full frame. Ordinary dialogue is shot simply and economically.

The camera stays mostly still, then wakes up exactly when the emotion does: handheld, tracking, and panning reserved for the cathartic beats.

STYLIZATION

PACING – Jumpy and elliptical. Scenes cut mid-motion and land somewhere new. Time skips are frequent and unmarked. We never know if one hour, day, or week has passed. Think The Wolf of Wall Street meets The Studio.

SOUNDTRACK — A relentless jazz score. Drums and upright bass, swing rhythm. The freestyle follows the flow of dialogue, reflecting the characters' inner state. Think Birdman, but with Whiplash's flair.

HOW WE MAKE IT

Where we are now

• Spitballin' is already real. The script is locked and proofread. The proof of concept is shot. And we have a full crew of ten out of twenty confirmed: director, producer, director of photography, line producer, 1st AD, gaffer, key grip, 1st AC, 2nd AC, and DIT.

BTS with our crew: Drew Storcks

• This is a team with real experience producing and shooting shorts. We've made things before, and we've made them well. We're shooting on an ARRI Alexa Mini with top-tier lighting, offered to us at a steep discount through industry trust, and it means your money goes further than it should.

BTS with our crew: Martin Samano

• Two locations are locked. One is being scouted. Two need to be paid for before we can lock them in, and that's exactly where the $7,000 comes in. Everything else is ready. The only things standing between us and production are props, those last locations, and the shoot itself.

What the $7,000 pays for

Every dollar is a hard cost. Not salaries, not vanity. Just what it takes to get this pilot on its feet:

• Camera & lighting (~$1,000) — an ARRI package with a top-notch lighting kit to match that would normally cost far more, thanks to our discount
• Locations — 2 days shooting in an apartment set, along with a bar, a restaurant, and a convenience store
• Food & craft services — breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the whole crew, every shoot day
• Crew fuel & parking — our crew is working for meals, gas, and gratitude, and we cover all three
• Equipment transport — U-Haul for four days
• Production design — props and wardrobe
• Insurance — protecting the equipment and taking care of our crew
• Expendables — the first aid kit, the gaffer's tape, all the overlooked stuff that keeps a set running

We believe feeding our crew good meals is the most essential part of working with a crew. When people give you their time and talent, you take care of them; that's where our money goes.

Our biggest cost drivers are food and locations. One scene shoots for two days in an apartment, and in LA, sets are expensive. That's the honest math.

TIMELINE

• Mid-September (~Sept 15): Production. One of our key locations is already locked for this window.
• October: Post-production — editing, color, and recording our original jazz score.
• After post: Festival run. We're aiming for SXSW.
• After the run: Depending on the incentive tier, most backers get a private link to the final pilot, and to our top-tier backers, an invitation to a private premiere at a local LA theater.

At the end of the day, you'll know exactly when and how you'll see what you helped make. That's the promise.

If we pass our goal

Every dollar past $7,000 unlocks more:

First up: a full jazz score, festival admissions, a professional color grade, a sound finish, and music clearance for the tracks we really want.

The dream version: extra shooting days, which means lower pressure and better performances on screen, plus top-notch locations. It buys the pilot room to breathe.

WHY US?

Because we live it. We're young LA filmmakers writing about broke LA creatives trying to make it; it's an autobiography doused in impostor syndrome that most creatives can identify with. And we're already real: script locked, proof of concept shot, ten crew confirmed, and an ARRI Alexa Mini waiting. We've made things before, and we've made them well.

Was It Worth It? - Dir. Martin Samano

WHY THIS?

We live in the age of nihilism, and Spitballin' answers back with existential absurdism. An absurdist comedy about people trapped in senseless situations who push forward anyway. It finds the light and laughs at the chaos. We believe wholeheartedly that the world needs this.

WHY NOW?

Because creative work is in danger. The industry is imploding, studios are playing it safe, and original voices are getting squeezed out before they're heard, while audiences are starving for stories that don't feel focus-grouped to death. The times are calling for exactly this: something strange, honest, and alive. If new filmmakers don't tell these stories now, the machine won't do it for us. 

Spitballin' - Test Footage

Pledge, follow, share:

Pledge if you can. We encourage you to do the next most valuable thing: follow @spitballin.show on Instagram, share our pitch video, and tag someone who'd want in on this.

Copy-paste this anywhere:

One blood oath. One week. Ten million dollars on the line. Be part of the next great TV show: a grounded absurdist comedy about making it in LA. seedandspark.com/fund/spitballin | Instagram: @spitballin.show

WRAP

“Now that you’ve met the world, the characters, and the story, turn the page to meet the team behind it, and how we plan to bring it all to life.

Thank you for reading to this point. We hope you enjoy watching Spitballin’ half as much as we’re enjoying making it for you.”

— Martín Sámano