Multi-Platform Storytelling

Jonathan – Mini Saga

by Matt Serafini

Jonathan knew that he was going to be huge. When he left home, he told his mother and family that he would miss them. After months of wandering the country, he found himself in a mad scientist’s laboratory. No one could have possibly predicted that Jonathan would become a giant

Script Idea #1 – Video Game

I have an idea for a video game based on this mini saga by Matt Serafini. The video game will focus on the life of Jonathan. It will chronicle his adventures through a series of quests. The first half of the game will feature him exploring different areas of the country, where he will encounter obstacles and puzzles that he has to overcome to get to the next stage of the game. It will be an RPG to an extent, but each level will feature challenges and puzzles. The tutorial will start in Jonathan’s home and he will have some basic puzzles that will teach the player the controls and set up the story of him leaving home. The player will briefly interact with his parents. Dialogue will be part of the puzzle for the game and the player will earn points based on how well these social interactions go and potentially unlock bonus content. The player will go on to explore various scenery and different areas of the world, completing puzzles, challenges, and interacting with other people to earn points. Halfway through the game the player will meet the mad scientist. From here he will have to complete several quests for the scientist in order to get all the components necessary to turn him into a giant. The mad scientist needs a certain elixir to complete the job, so Jonathan needs to find all of the ingredients to make the potion. He again has to navigate various areas of the world to find these different ingredients and must complete several puzzles and challenges to move on to the next area of the game. Once he finds all of these ingredients, he returns to the mad scientist and must complete some sort of potion making puzzle to actually get the completed potion. He then takes the potion and grows into a giant. Now he can explore other worlds, the scientist tells him, for now the player can grow as large or as small as the player wants to and can simply walk from planet to planet and then adapt to his environment. The player now goes on to visit several different worlds and explores the environments of these places. Each world will have different unlock able content and puzzles for the player to solve. The game will end with Jonathan saying that he has had enough adventures for a while and he’ll return home to his parents. You may be thinking that this game sounds a little pedestrian, but my target audience is children ages 5-13. The game is intended to teach children critical thinking and problem solving skills in a fun environment. The game is designed in a similar format to the currently popular Skylanders and Disney Universe games, where additional content, powers, and worlds can be unlocked by purchasing game encoded figurines. This is appealing to the target audience because they get to do more in their game, plus they get a tangible object to play with outside of the game.

Note: Video games are clearly not my strong suit.

Script Idea #2 – Movie

The next great coming of age movie will focus on Jonathan. Jonathan is our protagonist and is adapted from the popular mini saga from Matt Serafini. I think the studio will be able to benefit from adapting from mini saga’s because there isn’t enough substance to cause fan uproar due to deviations from the source material, but the work has enough recognition that people will be interested to see the adaptation. I am confident that we will be able to add depth and detail to the work that the original 50-word piece could not hope to accomplish. Jonathan just graduated high school and has dreams of fame and glory. His parents are determined that Jonathan must go to college and get a degree so he will be better prepared for the real world. Jonathan is convinced that he will be able to do more if he just goes out to Hollywood or New York and follows his dreams. One of the earliest scenes in the movie will be an intense fight between Jonathan and his mother. Jonathan will storm off to his room after the fight and pretend to go to sleep, but will actually gather all of his stuff together and write a note telling his parents that he can’t pretend to be content anymore and he needs to pursue his dreams. He buys himself a bus ticket to Los Angeles and begins his trip across the country. On his way he makes a friend in the form of a girl named Natalie who is pursuing similar dreams. They arrive in Los Angeles and get a small, crusty apartment on the edge of town together. They both get part time jobs to keep themselves in money, but Natalie is discovered by a talent agency fairly quickly and soon forgets about Jonathan, who struggles to ever get an audition. Months pass and he sees a trailer for a new blockbuster that heavily features Natalie and gets incredibly upset. He breaks down in the apartment he once shared with his friend. He is forced to become a test subject for various products to pay the bills and eventually bites off a bit more than he can chew. He sees an ad that says “I can make you huge” and being a little slow, he misinterprets the meaning of the ad and goes to the scientist’s laboratory. The scientist seems a little off, but Jonathan is so consumed by his dreams of fame and glory that he pays no attention to it. He takes the potion and instantly grows 100 feet. The scientist mysteriously disappears, but after Jonathan has a run in with the police (being a 100 feet tall giant and all) he quickly becomes the latest Hollywood. Everyone wants the giant for his or her movies. He gets his own reality show and a custom made house in the mountains. Jonathan grows tired of this lifestyle. His travel is limited due to his destructive nature and he feels trapped by the paparazzi. Everything he does is documented, but he misses his family and Natalie still isn’t interested in him. He breaks down during the shoot of one of his movies and shrinks back to his normal size. Everyone quickly forgets about him because he really wasn’t a very good actor, but Natalie visits him and apologizes for leaving him. She kisses him on the cheek and tells him that he needs to go home. She tells him that she truly believes that he will do great things one day, but his time hasn’t come yet. She also says that she’ll be looking forward to seeing him again when he does. Jonathan takes a flight home using some of the money he made as a giant. He knocks on his door and the last shot of the movie is Jonathan hugging his parents.

Script Idea #3: TV Series

I think this mini saga by Matt Serafini has a large amount of potential for sitcom adaptation. I’m thinking it could work as a 3-camera setup for TBS or Logo. Our main character would be Jonathan, a giant of a man living in Beverly Hills. When casting we should look for someone that we can either be depicted as larger than the rest of the cast using camera angles and props or someone who actually is fairly gigantic like Shaquille O’Neal (but unlike Shaq, we need someone who can actually act). The pilot episode would explain the circumstances of his height. He left his parents house at young age to become huge and accidentally did in the most literal sense of the word when he misunderstood the meaning behind a scientist’s proposition. The sitcom will be an ensemble cast and will focus on the friend group of this giant. The group will include: Natalie, an aspiring actress and Jonathan’s primary love interest (think Abby Elliot or Anna Kendrick), Timothy, his grounded screenwriter friend who always pitches them an idea for a truly terrible movie every episode (think Adam Pally, Lamorne Morris, or Chris Pratt), Lisa, the diva who owns the mansion next door with her purse dog (Jane Krakowski, Mikaela Watkins, or Casey Wilson), Roy, a character actor who also works as a popular drag queen in the club scene, known for deadpan insults (Willam Belli or Bianca Del Rio would both be good choices), and Jonathan’s overbearing mother (Ana Gasteyer). Each episode would focus on the group’s wacky misadventures and scenarios that this odd group of friends manage to get themselves into. Episodes will focus on the different ways each member is able to navigate the ups and downs of Hollywood. Jonathan and Natalie will have a will they won’t they sort of chemistry and one of the strongest friendships (the actress playing Natalie needs to be the shortest cast member to drive the comical nature of their relationship home. Lisa and Roy will have a love/hate sort of friendship that leads them to frequently insult or throw shade at each other due to their conflicting diva personalities. Timothy will bounce back and forth between each group and occasionally bond with Jonathan’s mother. One episode could focus on Jonathan’s career as a giant actor and talk about how easy it is for him to get work being the only actual giant in the film industry. Another episode could show some of Roy’s disaster of a time on RuPaul’s Drag Race and maybe have some guest stars from that program. Lisa’s main plot line will be opening her shoe business, wherein she works to corner the burgeoning doggy shoe market in Beverly Hills. The show will tackle some issues with people dealing with being different in a notoriously mean town, but will mostly be lighthearted feel good comedy. While I think TBS would be a good fit for the program as well, I think we ought to send it to Logo, because that network has a dearth of original comedies at the moment.