Nina Massara: 'Postcard to New Orleans'

The first time I heard the song I immediately felt close to the character and her emotions. Having been in a long distance relationship for 2.5 years myself, I knew what it meant to be far away from the one you love. I wanted to put the audience in that very intimate, emotional and lonely place that the singer is in as she sings her song. As soon as she opens up and begins to sing she creates a very defined and intimate space, and that was the space that I wanted to put the audience in. By not cutting I wanted to create a presence, and an immediacy, that the audience can't escape from -- it was my way of saying to the audience "You have to hear this and I won't disturb you. Now listen."

The other key element was to create a journey that the singer goes through from feeling a strong yearning and longing, and actual weakness, to gradually finding her strength. She regains her strength and self-respect through singing but she can't open up yet, she can't look into the eyes of the people around her, the audience. By being introvert and by not looking at us, the audience, the people who are looking in, she reaches a point at the end of the song where she has the power and self-confidence to speak out loud about her boyfriend's infidelity and confronts him with it when she looks directly at us - and him - for the first and last time.