Ashkin Heydarypour: Film Student Writes First Feature Length

Ashkin Heydarypour paces his home–bedroom to the kitchen, kitchen to the living room, living room to the bathroom, bathroom to the bedroom–while clutching the phone tightly to his ear. 

“I met this girl online, Laura Beth. She’s twenty-four and lives in L.A. She’s a cinematographer. I wrote and told her about my script, she’s interested. I think it would be nice to have a girl filming my next project, she would be able to capture the intimacy between the characters that I’m going for. It would be a whole different perspective. What do you think, mom?” 

But he is only referring to one of his current endeavors. On top of that, the twenty year old Brooks Institute of Photography film student is writing his first feature length screenplay, and is equally excited about that.

“It theoretically has a lot to do with consumerism. It’s about cults and how people lose themselves in them. All that centered around a love story in Tokyo, Japan,” he says. 

Heydarypour spends a good portion of everyday devoted to perfecting the script, building on to it so that in a few weeks it could be complete. His current class is seven weeks long and completely devoted to writing a full feature length film. 

“Now because of my screen writing class, I have been helped to have a better understanding of the skeleton of storytelling. I have a much better comprehension of how to make the emotional beats of my films work more effectively. I have a newfound confidence and ability to write a whole screenplay successfully,” he says confidently.

Along the way, Heydarypour’s friends and family serve as moral support, as well as aiding him on the creation of his projects. They make up the actors and crew for all of his sets, while his parents are always credited as the executive producers.