Michael Reisman

Storyteller, Writer, Narrative Designer ... and more

About Michael

Michael Reisman is an Emmy and Producers Guild Award-winning Narrative Designer with years of freelance experience as a writer; a script consultant; a story analyst for movies, television, and interactive media; a copywriter; a published author of the Simon Bloom Trilogy—science-fiction/fantasy action novels for middle readers; and more.

He has years of experience working on augmented, mixed, and virtual reality interactive storytelling for Apple’s Vision Products Group (VPG). He was Narrative Designer on two released projects, For All Mankind: Time Capsule and Encounter Dinosaurs, and he also wrote copy and content, provided experience and story analysis, delivered research, constructed worldbuilding, and … well, there’s a resume at the bottom of this site with more details.

He was born in New Jersey but moved to Los Angeles long enough ago that he should have lost his accent. (He hasn’t.) He juggles periodically, can use chopsticks with either hand, and sometimes talks about himself in the 3rd person.

Portfolio

Spotlight

Here are some projects worth checking out; click on the images, see what happens!

I was Narrative Designer on For All Mankind: Time Capsule, which my team made with Tall Ship Productions and released in 2021. It’s an augmented reality app, a narrative with game mechanics, that tells a story about and shares lore connected to the Apple TV+ show, For All Mankind.

We won a 2021 Emmy for Innovation in New Media and a Producers Guild Award for it!

If you haven’t seen For All Mankind, it takes place in an alternate reality where the Soviets beat the US to the Moon and the Space Race continues on as decades pass. Our goal was to tell a compelling story set between seasons 1 and 2, to provide insight into various aspects of the world that were not fleshed out on the show, and to showcase the interactive capabilities of ARKit on the iPhone and iPad.

As Narrative Designer, I was integral to the creative process (from ideation to writing various parts) as well as bug-finding and play-testing. I also worked on its internal and App Store copy.

You can click on the image above to see the App Store entry (which includes its trailer).

The Screenshots section has some images from the app to showcase some excerpts of what I wrote for the project. (It was a fun project, but I’m especially pleased with the text adventure Crater Quest, a game-within-a-game I wrote for it.)

Here are some links to announcements and reviews:

I was Narrative Designer on Encounter Dinosaurs, which my team made with Jon Favreau’s Fairview Portals. It’s an interactive mixed reality app with game mechanics that was released with the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro.

The experience ties into Apple TV+’s show, Prehistoric Planet, following certain creatures (and a specific scenario) from season 2, episode 2. Our goal was to showcase the interactive as well as visual and audio capabilities of mixed reality on the Vision Pro. It allows users to not only view but to connect with animals from 66 million years ago; there are branches—including an alternate ending—based on how the user interacts with the characters.

As Narrative Designer, I was integral to the creative process (from ideation and shaping branching structure to writing the Closed Captions and Scene Descriptions), working with Accessibility for UI/UX and voiceover sessions, and bug-finding and play-testing. I also worked on internal and App Store copy for it.

You can click on the image above to see the App Store entry (which includes its trailer).

Here are some links to sites focused on the project, including a YouTube video and a couple of reviews.

(While the above video provides a two-dimensional view of someone else’s experience of Encounter Dinosaurs, I highly recommend getting the full, three-dimensional impact of watching it via Vision Pro. They give demos at Apple Stores!)

This is the Simon Bloom Trilogy, my published novels aimed at middle-grade readers (9-12 years old).

The series chronicles the adventures of a youth named Simon Bloom who finds a book (a Book, really) that lets him control the laws of Physics. Simon lives in a world just like ours, except there’s a secret organization that works with sentient Books to understand—and manipulate—the natural laws of the universe. Throughout the trilogy, Simon and his friends have fun with the abilities this Book grants them. Unfortunately, there are members of the secret organization that want the Book—and the power it grants—for their own not-so-playful purposes…

While I’m no scientist, I am fascinated by many aspects of the subject (thanks, in part, to some great teachers in high school and college). After quite a bit of research and feedback from actual scientists, I incorporated various principles into a magic system in hopes it would be fun, exciting, and demonstrative of how interesting science really is.

If you’d like to know more, you can click on the image above to see the trilogy’s Goodreads page.

The Samples section has some excerpts of text from the first book as well as from a screenplay adaptation I’m working on.

Here are links to some reviews and audiobook excerpts:

Samples

Here are two screenwriting samples taken from a recent script I wrote (an adaptation of my novel, Simon Bloom, the Gravity Keeper), two sample interactive games I made via Twine, and excerpts from my novels.

“Sure, he can write prose, copy, and silly comments on a portfolio site, but can he write scripts?”

If you were thinking that, well, valid question. But, yes! I’ve written feature-length screenplays and 11-minute, 22-minute, and 44+-min teleplays, as well as an array of different-length scripts for a variety of explorations during my Apple days.

While I can’t share the Apple stuff, here are two excerpts from the most recent screenplay I’ve written. It’s an adaptation of my first published book, Simon Bloom, the Gravity Keeper. (It was optioned previously by Universal and Walden Media, but now that rights have reverted to me, I’m taking a crack at it.)

There’s a little blurb at the top of each giving you a touch of background info…

Content coming soon!

Here are two little excerpts from Simon Bloom, the Gravity Keeper. It’s the first in my trilogy of middle grade novels (aimed at ages 9-12, though I’ve heard from readers a little younger and quite a bit older than that), followed by Simon Bloom: The Octopus Effect and Simon Bloom: The Order of Chaos.

(You can learn more about them in the Spotlight section. Or, if scrolling allllll the way up there is too much, here’s a bit more on the subject…)

“How do you ‘keep’ gravity,” you ask? My answer is, “I mean, it’s just an expression,” but also, “with a special Book!”

Simon Bloom is an imaginative 11-year-old living in Lawnville, NJ (which, as a complete coincidence, may be a tiny bit similar to the town of Fair Lawn, NJ, where I grew up).

One of the main reasons I wrote these books is because I often daydreamed (um, and still do) about what it would be like to have magical-, mutant-, or radioactive spider bite-derived abilities that let people do things science usually says we can’t. Because that’s what all the fantasy (and soft science-fiction) books, comics, games, movies, and shows are doing: Letting their characters play with the laws of the natural world in varying ways.

So, I figured, why not admit that? Why not have “spell books”–the Books–actually be connected to those natural laws that humanity calls science? Why not have a secret organization filled with people who work with those Books to manipulate those natural laws? Why not have that organization run into some trouble due to schemes, schisms, and one Book skedaddling from an attempted coup? And, finally, why not have that Book-on-the-lam find a good-natured, imaginative kid who could do wonders with it?

Countless drafts, thousands of words, a bunch of book deals (across 8 languages!), and a lot of sweat & tears later, here we are!

Screenshots

Some writing I did for Emmy and Producers Guild award-winning augmented reality (AR) app For All Mankind: Time Capsule, including excerpts from the text adventure game-within-a-game, Crater Quest:

The app’s story takes place (and was released) between seasons 1 & 2 of the Apple TV+ show For All Mankind. They’re set in an alternative reality where the Soviets beat the US to the Moon.

The introduction had to be short and compelling while giving app users an understanding of this other Earth’s socio-political uniqueness. It also had to quickly provide context for the main character of the app (who had a minor role in the show’s 1st season but would have a more prominent one in the 2nd).

This was really fun to make! We wanted an 80s-era game for protagonist Danny to play on his Apple II before continuing the main narrative. And so … Crater Quest, a variation on a classic text adventure.

I love the old text adventures (like the Zork series!) with their wry senses of humor, sometimes-baffling command syntax, and gruesome yet hilarious deaths. It was also an opportunity to insert dark humor to ease the app player’s upcoming transition into a more emotional, even wrenching, part of the main narrative.

The game-within-a-game focuses on a US astronaut seeking ice in the huge ‘Crater X’ on the Moon. A Soviet cosmonaut has gotten there first, leading to a rather silly cat-and-mouse situation (e.g., the cosmonaut has carved messages in the walls to convince the astronaut to remove their helmet).

Crater Quest is on rails for app players; they click along as Danny’s choices get his astronaut killed twice. The app then guides the player back to the main narrative (and that drama!). After that section, though, players can re-insert the AR floppy disk to keep playing Crater Quest. I wrote another horrible death, two Pyrrhic victories (the astronaut survives but fails the mission or succeeds the mission but will run out of air), and one complete victory. (Sorry, Zork fans, there are no grues…)

Throughout the app, there are numerous items with which the player can interact. Some contain clues as to protagonist Danny’s nature and elements of his life, while others serve to provide lore about the alternate reality of the app.

I enjoyed writing this newspaper and magazine content to provide lore and flavor. The articles for Corvette magazine (a real magazine in our world, too) has breezy advice for Vette-lovin’ readers on their road trips. The articles, media reviews, and other fare in The Houston Sentinel (a fictional newspaper from the world of the TV show For All Mankind) further flesh out the nature of how this other universe’s 1980 might be developing.

The book review of Yankee Moon shows how inhabitants of that world might react to our world. It also alludes to info Ronald D. Moore, creator of the source series on Apple TV+, provided about why this reality diverged from our own.

I invented the restaurants, bands, reviewed TV shows, and other such aspects to echo but not copy our world. (And the horoscopes were just a fun addition to amuse anyone who reads that far!)