The piece talks about how the father leaves for stretches to look for oil, how there is no restaurant for 500 miles and how they are driving in utter darkness with nothing to see. The desperation is also seen in how the main character tries to distract herself from the reality of missing her father with her game, making lists and drawing. It seems like her mother makes her shut it off so she doesn't have to be alone in her fear and it works. The daughter gets afraid. There is relief when they finally find him, but there is still that feeling of isolation.
The images that were the most powerful to me were that of the empty road, the blueprints of the base camp and the one where the game was shut off, pushing the girl into a more fearful place.
I think this is more successful than a traditional approach because it grounds you in the reality of the story. When she speaks of the buzzing of electricity in the sky, you can hear it. When she's taking pictures of flowers, you have to move the mouse over the flowers and actually take the pictures. There is a drawing of the base camp, very technical, that seems to imply that this isn't home. A child would draw home very differently. If this were words alone, you wouldn't be in that place and you wouldn't feel the desperation as clear.
The piece works because it moves at a pace that is appropriate and uses images and sounds that put the viewer there. The blinking map of China, the words scrolling at reading speed, the interactivity of the game that distracts the viewer like it distracts the child--all work together to put the viewer there.
What I like about this piece that I would like to put in my own work is both the sense of pacing and the fact that it draws you in to the point where you must see some kind of resolution. It would be very hard to "opt out" mid way through, just like a cliffhanger novel or a serial tv show. To be able to hold someone's concentration in that kind of way would be awesome.
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