Operator review

Operator is a short film made in 2015 and is directed by Caroline Bartleet. The narrative is about a phone operator who is talking to a woman who is struggling in a house fire, and the operator is trying to calm her down and talk her through the steps she needs to take to stay safe. She has to be very calm and collected, as the woman on the other end of the line is panicking.

The film works very well with being short in length, since we as viewers dive into the narrative and there is a sudden stop to it with a cliff-hanger. Both of these things build the tension for an audience. It also gets the audience emotionally invested in the story very quickly and just getting that small snippet makes you feel like you understand what the operator has to go through on a daily basis. It builds intensity and creates suspense.

The micro elements used are extremely effective, especially in terms of sound. The sound we can hear is everything the operator can hear on the other end of the phone, which draws us into the bubble of her world and what she's trying to process and help fix. Since we can't see the woman on the other end of the line, just the operator on the phone, the sound does an extremely good job of making an audience believe that the fire is really happening and the woman is really in danger. It also paints a picture in the audiences mind of what is happening. Both actors performances also help this - the woman in the fire is clearly very panicked, and as the operator is getting a picture of what is happening, so is the audience. The sound then cuts out completely as soon as the line goes dead at the end of the call and we know that the woman is safe. The operator seems to be slightly shaken and relieved, and that is the same way the audience feels. However, she manages to continue her job as the next phone call comes in and stays professional.

This film represents gender in a certain way as well, using two women as the main characters. The operator, in contrary to stereotypical female characters, manages to stay collected and professional throughout the whole ordeal, trying to help the woman as much as she possibly can. The woman in the fire seems to be a single mother, since there is no indication of a man being in the house, and manages to rescue her son and save herself from the flames, showing bravery. It also shows a sense of relatability between the two characters being female, especially since the operator might have ha a child herself.

I really liked the suspense in this film and found it to be very dramatic - this was mainly due to the micro elements being used extremely efficiently, especially the use of sound. I would probably like to have some sort of intensity in my own film, and may think about how to use sound to achieve this.