Operator - Caroline Bartleet

The Operator is a short film following an operator responding to a call from a woman experiencing a house fire. However, the viewer never sees the events of the fire and instead stays focused on the woman responding to the call, in a series of close up shots. We are left instead to imagine the events we can hear through the phone. We first hear the voice of the mother, panicked asking for help. She states that her son is upstairs and despite the operator telling her not to, we hear her run up the stairs to get to him. We watch the operator talk her through keeping smoke out the room and getting to a window, when we finally hear the sirens of fire engines and her and her sons rescue from the house. After the phone cuts off, all sound entirely cuts out, leaving a powerful impression of the work of an operator, making us empathise with what she goes through for her work. The sounds of her workplace then resumes and we see her pick up another phone call. This helps us see that, as dramatic as the events of the film were for the viewer, this woman has to keep going through it again and again.