“Spit It Out” filmmakers Austin and Westin Ray, who direct together under the moniker the Ray Sisters, first got the idea to make movies when The West Wing came calling.
“We grew up on an aquaculture farm near the Californian-Mexican border,” Austin Ray explains. “It’s an area often used as a film location because it resembles the deserts of the Middle East. As kids, an episode of The West Wing descended onto our backyard and transformed it with military vehicles and actors leading camels down our road. It gave us a front row seat to witness how adults could play pretend for a living. It was in that moment, I think, the filmmaking spark was born.”
Their interest in film — and family — continues with their short “Spit It Out,” playing this weekend at the Coronado Island Film Festival. It stars Eric Roberts as a father and excited grandfather-to-be who tries to learn more about his ancestry — and makes a discovery that could tear his family apart.
The Ray Sisters’ films and commercial work have won awards from the Directors Guild of America, Austin Film Festival, Savannah Film Festival, Telly Awards, and HBO. Austin Ray is also a composer whose scores have premiered at Telluride Film Festival and won a Student Academy Award.
We talked with the Ray Sisters about making films in the San Diego area, trading family stories with Eric Roberts, and the calamities that can result from spitting in a tube.
The Ray Sisters on Making ‘Spit It Out’
MovieMaker: How did you become filmmakers and decide to work together?
Westin Ray: As sisters who are close friends, there was never one decision to start working together — it was a magnetic pull toward collaboration, strengthened by our shared aesthetics and a healthy twin-like dose of mind reading. We joke that we don’t advise working with a sibling… unless you’re already doing it naturally. While at Chapman University’s Dodge film school, co-directing was not allowed.
Our fellow alums, the Duffer Brothers — the creators of Stranger Things — shared with us that they had been in the same boat. So like them, we did not officially start co-directing, as the Ray Sisters, until after graduating. There are so many brother co-directing pairs in this industry — where are the sister duos with weird matching boys’ names?
MovieMaker: The situation in this film is so fraught and complicated — viewers often get a “what would I do” feeling, and are put in the shoes of many different characters. Where did the idea originate?
Westin Ray: As the screenwriter of “Spit It Out” and a history buff, I fell down my own rabbit hole of research during the pandemic that led back 12 generations on websites like Ancestry and 23 & Me. Austin gently reminded me that I should relate this time-consuming hobby back to our careers somehow, so I started writing a script. Within the same year, our circle of friends began sharing stories of unexpected discoveries made through DNA matching, and yet strangely, we hadn’t heard of any film or TV stories that specifically dealt with this topic.
I wrote a script with a broad range of character perspectives and reactions, because in real life, these stories affect each family member differently.
Austin Ray: Spitting in a vial is awkward — so is the juxtaposition of celebrating your past, while still concealing a lie. These juicy contradictions prompted us to create a story about family dynamics, preconceived notions, spit, and surprises. At our screening Q&A’s, we usually have multiple audience members who approach us afterwards to confess their own family secrets, revealed through these innocent DNA kits.
MovieMaker: Why did you see Eric Roberts as the dad? Why do you think he wanted to take on the role?
Westin Ray: Eric plays charming, yet morally duplicitous very well. He has a history of portraying villains, but we hadn’t seen him embody a loving family man before. These contrasting qualities make for a riveting watch. Eric loved the script — he and his wife Eliza are similarly fascinated by this topic of DNA tests and have relatable stories of their own.
On set, during lunch, he and our whole cast & crew sat in camp chairs and traded stories about unusual family histories and heirlooms, like his dad’s treasured watch. Eric stayed very true to our script, but he improvised one line—which ironically I get complimented the most on—and have to fess up that I didn’t write it!
Austin Ray: On “Spit It Out,” Eric rounds out an ensemble cast full of actors whom we’ve worked with before or wanted to work with. The lead actress Kate Sumpter, who has starred in the BBC’s The Little Drummer Girl with Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgård, plays Eric’s daughter, and her inherent sense of right and wrong is an interesting foil to Eric’s enigmatic character.
MovieMaker: You have strong ties to the San Diego area — how does the Coronado Island Film Festival feed into them?
Austin Ray: It’s actually thanks to MovieMaker that we discovered the Coronado Island Film Festival from the 2025 list of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee and decided to apply in the nick of time on its Late Deadline submission. We went to high school in San Diego and have family here, so it’s extra sweet to be able to screen at the historic Hotel del Coronado and have our grandparents attend the screening.
The caliber of film programming, panelists, and filmmakers make this festival such a hidden gem. Shoutout to the CEO & Artistic Director Merridee Book for propelling this filmmakers’ paradise to new heights.
MovieMaker: Amen. And thanks for the kind words! What was your biggest challenge in making this and how did you overcome it?
Austin Ray: We didn’t have one big challenge, but more of a top three.
Westin Ray: Foremost, we shot during the SAG strikes under the exemption of the Short Film agreement. In order to meet those budget restraints, we had to move the production from the Catskills in New York to San Diego, where we had more resources and accommodations for a 25-person crew. Challenges can become blessings. It’s the first film we’ve shot in San Diego, and we’re so proud to have done it locally.
Austin Ray: The second challenge was shooting multi-cam. We usually shoot single-cam, but for “Spit It Out,” our incredible DP Chris Koser suggested we shoot multi-cam with two Alexa Mini’s. Shooting like this definitely added to the cine budget — and footage size on hard drives — but it was well worth it for the time that it saved in our schedule to capture everyone’s coverage and reactions to lines.
Because of our film’s premise of a family gathering, the script includes a mammoth 10-page scene with six characters. Good thing we’re co-directors and have double the eyeballs, because it was multi-tasking on steroids to give notes to so many actors’ performances simultaneously.
Westin Ray: Thirdly, in the midst of rehearsals the day before set, a honey bee flew inside my nostril and stung me. Luckily, the stinger was swiftly extracted by my sister. Go teamwork! Later in post production, while Austin was working on the music score for the film, she was stung in the foot by a sting ray — so this film was made with lots of venom pulsing in our director veins. Still waiting for our superpowers to appear.
“Spit It Out” plays Sunday at the Coronado Film Festival as part of the Ties That Bind program. You can read more of our festival coverage here.
Main image: “Spit It Out,” courtesy of the Ray Sisters.