Pitch CampaignHOLD THE LEVEE
A volunteer fire captain organises a river town to hold an earth wall with sandbags and stubbornness, after the state writes the town off as unsalvageable.
by Awaiting creator · Launched Aug 20, 2026
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About this title
Synopsis
Roy Tessendorf is a volunteer fire captain. He has nineteen people, four trucks, and a town of eight hundred sitting behind an earth levee that the Corps of Engineers has just described, in writing, as indefensible. The equipment goes eleven miles downriver, to a town of four thousand. That is the correct decision and Roy does not argue with it. He drives home, parks, and starts making a list of everyone who owns a truck. The crest is nine days out. The wall needs two more feet along four miles. Nobody in the county is coming, the sand has to be bought, and the first question at the firehouse meeting is who is going to tell people to stay.
Who this is about
Roy Tessendorf runs a volunteer fire company of nineteen people in a Missouri river town of eight hundred, and has never in his life organized anything larger than a pancake breakfast.
What goes wrong
In July 1993 the Corps of Engineers reclassifies the levee as indefensible and moves its equipment eleven miles downriver to a town with four thousand people in it.
What's at stake
Eight hundred people, six hundred thousand sandbags, and a wall of packed earth that has to gain two feet before a crest that is nine days out.
Why it keeps going
Each episode is another day of the wall, another argument with a county that wants them gone, and another family deciding whether to stay and fill bags.
Takeaway
A town is not a place, it is the number of people who refuse to leave it.
Shelves
Themes
Story, in the creator's words
Not provided yet
Style
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Characters
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Tech stack
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Schedule
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Production plan
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Where your money goes
Your money goes straight to the creator to turn this pitch into a trailer. A pitch today is a poster and a logline. What the money buys is the first piece of film anyone will see.
Nothing is collected until two things are true
This campaign has to raise $300, which is 60% of its ask, and reach 50 backers. Whichever of the two happens later is the one that counts. Money without backers is one person, and backers without money is a crowd that cannot fund the thing, so a Pitch campaign needs both.
Released in stages, against delivered work
Scripts and reference sheets locked
30%Rough cut delivered
30%Pitch delivered
40%The creator has 30 days from the day this campaign closes to deliver. No part of the money is released for the campaign simply closing.
What comes next
Creator
155
Campaigns run
0
Titles on ArchTV
Delivery record
- Campaigns funded: 0
Titles at this stage are open concepts. A creator has not been attached yet, which is what the Pitch rung is for.