Operator | Caroline Bartleet | 2015

Directed by Caroline Bartleet in 2015, Operator follows the story of a 999 call during which a woman and her child are stuck on the top floor of an abandoned building, while this is happening the camera focuses it's attention on the eponymous operator, who can do little to help bar dispatching emergency services and attempting to calm the woman down.

The film follows a linear narrative structure, with a basic three-act structure, act one is the expositionary period at the beginning of the film, in which the audience is introduced to the emergency response centre, with mild comedic elements included such as a man calling who had lost his keys. Plot point one is the introduction of the central character of an unnamed female operator, who we can hear is attempting to deal with a call concerning a woman in a burning building, as the call progresses so does act two, the climax of the film is introduced with a literal smash, as firefighters break through a window in order to rescue the woman and her child, with act three resolving the narrative and the film ending with the operator taking another emergency call, one that could be as horrifying as the previous or one more akin to that of the comedic call overheard earlier.

The usage of cinematography within Operator is one of the things that make it so enduring, Bartleet's usage of tracking shots, place the audience in a perpetual state of discomfort much like the same the unnamed protagonist is feeling, the framing around the protagonist's face places the audience to connect with her experience, instead of that of the woman in the building. The director could just have easily cut between the receiver and the operator in order to balance out the characters, but her choice to frame only the operator establishes the connection of the audience with her, with her sense of helplessness, with her gratitude.

Operator lacks any non-diegetic sound effects bar one, when the woman on the other end of the line disappears from the call a large buzzing sound can be heard, increasing in volume gradually. Its solitude in being the only non-diegetic sound effect in the film heightens its ability to escalate tension, the audience genuinely does fear for the life of a character that is never shown, one which was given no exposition.

Overall, Bartleet crafted a film that manages to convey emotion and tension mostly through audio, flipping the idea of film being a purely visual medium on its head and proving that audio does not always need to satisfy the wants of video and that instead a story told mostly auditory can be enhanced through visuals.