More Than A Damsel

More Than A Damsel is a short film that was intended to be produced this semester, in Spring 2022, as part of the URSP. Due to COVID-19 and scheduling unavailabilities, the film will not be made this semester. But, this short video provides an overview of the plans for the film, as well as the story and creative style

Hello, my name is Taj Kokayi. I am a graduating senior in the film and video studies department, I am being mentored by Professor Lucy G. And my undergraduate research project is a short film, titled More Than A Damsel, unpacking the issue of sexual assault.

More than a Damsel is a dialogue-free, non-linear story that follows a young woman, Michelle, over three important points in her life.

The film is intended to bring awareness to the terrible reality of sexual assault that countless people face everyday. Research has shown, that every 73 seconds an American is sexually assaulted, 1 in 6 American women are survivors of sexual assault, and roughly 94% of women who are raped experience PTSD.

Now my film, More Than A Damsel, is meant to show just how severely sexual assault affects survivors and how they are not defined by their trauma.

Now the goal of this film is to help survivors feel less alone, and to remind them that they are not defined by their trauma, and to drive forward the discussion about sexual assault.

And cause viewers to think a little bit harder about how they view cases of assault and the trauma it ensues, as well as take a harder look at how easily rapists are forgiven.

More Than A Damsel is a film that I’ve been working on since my very first semester, here as a freshman at Mason. And over the past four years, we’ve faced a couple roadblocks.

I was originally planning to make this film my sophomore year, in my Fiction Filmmaking class for the Film department. But that was in the Spring of 2020, and as we all know, that’s when the pandemic began.

Back when I was originally planning to make this film during the Spring of 2020, we had already assembled a cast, a crew, and found locations on campus we could film at. But flash-forward to years, and all those cast and crew members are unavailable because they’re working on their own projects now.

So unfortunately, More Than A Damsel will not be getting made this semester. But I can show a couple things we would have done.

First I’ll show you some of the locations I found on campus, where we can film at.

Some of our scenes, specifically the ones where Michelle runs into her assaulter for the first time again, will take place on a college campus. And for those we scouted out Lecture Hall, here in the GMU Fairfax campus.

Some of our scenes will take place in a high school classroom. And for those scenes we went to Krug Hall.

And finally, some of our other scenes will take place in a bathroom. And for those we also went to Krug Hall, but this time found a bathroom that fit the aesthetic of our film.

We were also planning to use lots of motivated camera movement, with the camera moving from one direction or the other, to show how Michelle is progressing throughout the story.

And colored lighting and colored sets was going to be another major portion of our film.

As a dialogue free film, More Than A Damsel will be primarily told through its visuals. And one of the most important visual factors is color.

Here’s an example of some of the colors we found our film, and the symbolism or meaning of them.

Right here you can see a couple storyboards for the film that I’ve created.

And here’s a list of some of the costume pieces we were planning to use.

Throughout this video you have also seen some of the visual inspirations we used, such as paintings or quotes.

And even though More Than A Damsel won’t be coming to theaters this semester, I do hope to one day be able to tell this story, unpacking an important topic, that is swept under the rug far too often. Thank you.