Self-Producing your own Squid Game Parody on Instagram Reels
- Feb 5
- 3 min read
By Simeon Page
Giacomo Minichillo, a senior at Nashville School of the Arts, got his start making short form content on Instagram Reels in the form of comedic edits of the video game Fortnite. Since then, it has become something of a hobby for him. Giacomo has worked on numerous projects, ranging from personal items shown to close friends, secret video series only viewable by a few individuals, and projects like Family Game, a Family Guy centered parody of popular Netflix series Squid Game. You can watch Family Game at @therealfamilyguysquidgame2 in Instagram.
I sat down with Giacomo to discuss Family Game and the work he put into the series, available to watch on Instagram Reels. Being his largest project to date, there was a lot to talk about. The following interview has been edited and condensed.
Family Game is a very complex project with a lot of moving parts. Where did the original idea come from?
Well, basically I was watching Squid Game, and I was watching Family Guy and I was like... What if Peter Griffin was in Squid Game? I started a piece together characters and I realized it works so well, but no one had ever done it. It’s just genius.
What was the moment you really decided you were going to take off with the project?
Well, I had this idea in my mind for a while, but when Squid Game Season 2 was coming out, that's when it really came to fruition. In English class, last year, I shared ideas with a friend and eventually, when I had a free day, I decided to make the first Family Game episode as sort of a joke. You can see how it gets more complex as I developed the story. At the beginning, there's a lot of joke editing, there's cutting, hard pan, whatever. It does retain some of this comedic editing, but you can see in the emotional moments, when a character dies, you start getting flashbacks, fading out, or just silence. It blends comedy with our really dark reality.
How did you accomplish that while working with such a limited budget.
Yeah. I mean, a lot of this stuff I drew myself and I’d get my friends to voice act some of the characters, but it was really all me. When it came to recording my lines, it meant doing bad impressions that sometimes sounded like each other. It was really difficult. With Stewie, if you don't have creative control over Stewie, you're really forced into a box with Stewie, but with creative control over Stewie, you can go, “Hello, I love the fat man,” right? And it's just stuff like that that really makes it special.
What was your process of taking the classic Family Guy characters and putting them into the context of Squid Game.
Well, you can see with families, you have different archetypes, you have the core family, you have the family that all dies by episode five, and you have a found family. And you may think the theme is family, but it's more-so losing sight of family and sacrificing people. This is also talking about poverty and other themes found in Squid Game, but it’s more-so focused on the family aspect, much like season two.
How did you handle the public reception of the series?
Sometimes I would release episodes week after week, and then sometimes I just couldn't deliver and I would think, “What are people gonna think?” Sometimes I would release a banger with nine whole likes, and then the next week, I just got bogged down with schoolwork or I wanted to make it bigger, so it would take a lot more editing, or I didn't have enough storage. A lot of issues came up, but I think overall, if you look at the time span, it wasn't too grueling.
Is there anything else that you'd like to share about Family Game before we conclude the interview?
They're plenty of subtle gags. In Life of Brian 2, when Brian's making his speech, there's a bird flying around and there's a sunset that he's envisioning with Stewie. This is actually because I filmed early in the morning, and the take was just so good, I poured my heart out that I just couldn't redo it.
