Response to Operator

Narrative: Caroline Bartleet's 'Operator' (2015) short film is about an emergency-service operator who tries to save a young mother and her son from a house on fire that they are trapped in. By the end of the story we see that this is her daily routine and so the there is almost a cyclical structure to the film.

Genre: suspense, shown well through the music but also the silence at the end. It is effective that the film is short and everything happens quickly as it feels more hectic and hooks the audience.

Representation: the audience can see the variety within the job. At the beginning we hear part of a conversation about someone calling in for a locksmith, while the main character that we focus on is trying to save a woman and her son from dying in a fire.
There is also a gender representation as there is a relatability between the operator and the mother, however the operator is a lot more calm and detached so that she can focus on the problem she is trying to solve. This shows the strength within women - the operator doesn't let her emotions get in the way and the young mother can be seen as strong as there is no mention of a male/father figure in the house, making her seem as brave and independent within the situation.

Audience: the audience was thrown into the situation quite  quickly without having much background information about the situation, and so we were quite emotionally invested as it was more stressful that the situation was life threatening for the woman.

Micro-elements: the majority of the time there were long takes with a side profile of the operator like, similar to the picture above. There is a contrasting silence at the end which is effective for the audience to take in what just happened before we see the operator move on to the next call. As some of the dialogue is hard to hear because of how frantic it is, we focus more on the music and the effect of it.