Randy Astle Email & Phone Number

New York, Ny, Us

I write prompts and evaluate responses for various AI models, improving answers and eliciting higher-quality reasoning and writing abilities for different tasks.

New York, New York

I write screenplays, show bibles, and other material for children's series and media. While my current goal is to work on an active series, I've thus far especially worked in development by transforming production companies' rough concepts into honed bibles, pilot scripts, and other material with which they can pitch to broadcasters and other potential partners. I develop the world and characters, integrate curriculum if needed, and write dozens of episode summaries to ensure that the show viably has great stories to tell for many seasons. I've also created my own IPs and pitched to companies like Netflix, CBBC, Nelvana, and Sky Kids. Whether I'm working for an established studio like CHF Entertainment for their preschool show "Pip Ahoy" or a first-time producer like, most recently, a technology company in Honduras looking to create their country's first children's series, I love finding the heart of each show and developing a single idea into a finished world full of great characters with a series of engaging episode concepts ready to go. And it's amazing to have worked with people in places like Baltimore, Boston, Bristol, Dubai, Edinburgh, Green Bay, Kansas City, Karachi, Mumbai, Regina, San Juan, and Tampa.I've also written a text-based game for Kinzoo Technologies in Vancouver. It's a story about a dog trying to get his favorite bone back from a group of time-traveling Vikings, where the reader gets to choose the dog's actions. Written for 7-10 year-olds, the script includes 184,000 words in 418 text blocks across all its branching pathways. This was tremendously rewarding and I'm interested in pursuing additional game writing in the future.

New York, New York

I often work on video projects in roles such as writing, shooting, and editing. In addition to my own short films and video art projects, I've edited commercials at a marketing agency, shot classes for a nonprofit in Mexico City, and worked on short and feature-length films. Among other projects, I wrote "The Best Crop," an hour-long historical documentary about an orchard farming community in Utah, and assistant edited the horror film "Kinky Killers" and the documentaries "Archiculture," about a group of architecture students at Pratt Institute, "Reserved to Fight," about Iraq War veterans struggling with PTSD, and "Bringing Godzilla Down to Size: The Art of Japanese Special Effects," the first Japanese documentary about Godzilla.I've trained on film, Avid, and Final Cut, but I now primarily use Premiere.

New York, Ny

I largely created the field of Mormon film studies through my writing, teaching, and organizing. In 2018 I wrote the book "Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952," which won the award in Criticism from the Association for Mormon Letters. I began much earlier, however, and since 2002 have published or presented over sixty articles in books, journals, and conferences. In 2024, for instance, I presented the papers "Bitter Wind: Tracing the Evolving Relationship of White Mormons and Native Peoples in Film" at the Global Mormon Studies Conference in Mexico City and "Mormon Film's Sixth Wave: Digital Cinema and the Shaping of Mormon Identity" at the Mormon History Association Conference in Cleveland, as well as published the essay "Moving Pictures: Subjectivity and Mormon Identity in Documentary Film" in the book "Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader" from Oxford University Press. Other work includes teaching a course on Mormon film and acquiring over one thousand DVDs and other material at Brigham Young University, helping create the Mormon Literature & Creative Arts database, editing the film and photography content for the journal "Irreantum" for two years, editing special issues of "BYU Studies" and "Mormon Artist Magazine," helping organize the first LDS Film Festival and creating its annual academic forum, adjudicating the AML film awards, and organizing the film screenings and panels at the Sunstone Summer Symposium for three years.Given my position as a former Mormon still interested in the culture, I've striven to expand the aegis of Mormon cinema beyond its stereotypical conservative base. I've consulted on documentaries about Black Mormons and the feminists behind the Ordain Women movement, and amplified women, minority, and LGBTQ+ filmmakers, such as when I organized and chaired screenings and panel discussions on films about gay and trans teenagers in Utah. I believe work like this can make the culture more expansive and inclusive.

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

I wrote and edited content for the AI-powered toy robot Miko, including writing narrative and educational animated films, spoken games, interactive dialogue, jokes and riddles, and educational “missions.” I reviewed content for pedagogical standards, United States vernacular, and age-appropriateness for three age demographics between 3-10. I wrote the style guide to cohere Miko’s tone and personality for all international/multilingual writers and trained the staff in Mumbai on principles of narrative writing. I also helped develop new experiences and products such as the Miko Mini.

New York, United States

As a member of the New York City chapter board of directors, I managed a team overseeing records, fees, and benefits for CMA members, devised ways to recruit new members, and developed events and resources to increase the organization's value for current and prospective members. I oversaw the members' job board, liaised with corporate and nonprofit entities to create member benefits, and with the national team organized monthly CMA Connect events online during the pandemic, where I also gave presentations on topics like new media like VR and connections between television and publishing. From these events I developed a writing group for people, CMA members or not, particularly interested in writing for children; we meet on Reddit from across the country. I also attended monthly board meetings for the New York chapter and national membership meetings with the Los Angeles and San Francisco chapters to coordinate national membership efforts. Near the end of my tenure I assisted in CMA New York's transition back to in-person events as pandemic restrictions ended.

New York, United States

As the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person networking impossible, I assisted in administering CMA's inaugural national program for professional mentorship in the children's television industry by helping with communications between mentors and mentees, gathering and implementing participant feedback, managing three Facebook groups, organizing regular events, and creating online resources to enhance mentees' experience during the pandemic. I also participated in the program and used my experience to improve the program as we launched the second session.

Brooklyn, New York

I wrote articles about the film industry for both the website and print magazine of the world's largest publication on indie film, with a print circulation of over 60,000 readers. While covering numerous issues and productions, I quickly emphasized animation, social issue documentaries, and developing technologies like transmedia, interactive films, dual-screen films, audio watermarks, haptics, and especially augmented and virtual reality. This included coverage of individual films and filmmakers and broader issues like how film schools are incorporating VR into their curricula. I also covered the new media section of the Tribeca Film Festival from its very first year in 2013 until 2021, as well as covering other films from the traditional festival. Throughout my writing, I interviewed numerous filmmakers from around the globe, including director Robert Rodriguez, animators Glen Keane and Eric Darnell, "The Lion King" producer Don Hahn, and Steven Spielberg's longtime editor Michael Kahn. I'm proudest, however, of my articles covering developing film industries in places like Ukraine, Cuba, and Rwanda, as well as issues like big game poaching, salmon overfishing, ocean conservation, whaling, Native American mascoting, disappearing Indigenous languages, exploitation of public lands, the Fukushima nuclear accident, police militarization, South African gangs, Islamophobia, preserving the Holocaust's memory through VR, and resources for Black and minority filmmakers during the Black Lives Matter protests. Clips of all my online articles are at https://filmmakermagazine.com/author/randy-astle, and there are links to some individual pieces in the publications section below.

New York, New York

I conceived and created videos about beauty, lifestyle, and relationships for the BettyConfidential.com website, their first effort to move into online video. I created and produced a twelve-episode web series called "He Said, She Said," about men's and women's perspectives on relationship issues, as well as filming behind the scenes at New York Fashion Week and at other locations in the fashion and beauty industries.

Bronx, New York

I researched, indexed, and abstracted periodicals for the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, the leading subject database for public and university libraries throughout the country. Each day I would read roughly forty articles in magazines like The New Yorker, Popular Mechanics, Taste of Home, Iceland Magazine, Mother Jones, and The Weekly Standard, abstracting each article's key topics and points into searchable keywords that researchers could search for in their own libraries. This required speed and tenacity, and also an understanding of researchers' needs and indexing and database management.

Pasadena, California

I read, analyzed, and provided coverage of feature film screenplays for a script agency. In addition to writing coverage of every script, I created quantified evaluations in nearly two dozen criteria to delineate each script's strength and weaknesses. I quickly learned to identify common screenwriting mistakes and how to avoid them, as well as more general principles like how to pace and structure a narrative, how to create rounded characters, how to write realistic dialogue, and how to create a script's tone and subtext through style and technique. This has aided me with all my subsequent screenwriting.

Queens, New York

I gave tours, lectures, and demonstrations of historic filmmaking equipment, early video games, and activities such as ADR recording, sound mixing, and stop-motion animation to school groups, camps, and other groups of children, teens, and occasional adults. This took place in the galleries, where I would explain the museum's collections and lead activities in the interactive exhibits, as well as in the museum's main theater--where I gave orientations and screened classic television episodes, leading group discussions afterward--and the Nam June Paik classroom--where we could devote more time to in-depth animation or video projects. Working with large groups in the galleries also involved crowd management, protecting the collections, and working as a docent with individual visitors. I most enjoyed explaining early optical devices like the zoetrope and phenakistoscope and seeing kids' amazement as still images came to life without any cameras, and demonstrating very early video games like Ralph Baer's "Brown Box" prototype for the Magnavox Odyssey; kids would be completely bored by the concept of pushing a button to move a solid color across the screen, then I put a decal of an empty bucket on the screen and they exploded to life as they competed against each other to either fill or empty the bucket with "water." I learned how to teach and effectively interact face-to-face with children, and how to engage their interest regardless of the technology or subject matter. This has been invaluable as I've written for children who aren't in the room with me. In addition to working with visitors, I occasionally assisted with school outreach and office work, including for Sesame Workshop in the neighboring Kaufman Astoria Studios.

Provo, Utah, United States

As mentioned in my film history work, I taught a course in Mormon film history, treating it like an ethnic or national cinematic tradition. I created the syllabus, including an expansive filmography and bibliography for students' outside reading and viewing; I gave weekly lectures and screenings with class discussions; and I read and graded students' viewing/reading journals and final papers. In a separate concurrent position, I oversaw the university library's acquisition and cataloguing of thousands of DVDs, video cassettes, and related media; I created research and pedagogical material to make print holdings on Mormonism and cinema more accessible; I created public displays within the library; and I organized and held a series of film screenings in the library's film theater, including with guests who had worked on the films decades earlier.

Master Of Fine Arts (Mfa), Film Directing And Production

Worked as a director, screenwriter, DP, camera operator, camera assistant, sound recordist, boom operator, grip, gaffer, sound mixer.

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba, Film Production And Screenwriting

Activities and Societies: Phi Kappa Phi, Golden Key National Honor SocietyMagna cum laude. I emphasized screenwriting, writing several.