Vox pop project No.1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBmVnF7CGqw

Last Wednesday, we focussed on vox pops. In the morning we went into more depth on what they were, and analysed pros and cons of different examples. For example, a good vox pop includes clear sound quality and video. A bad one could be hard to hear and have a blurry image. Linked to this, we looked at how vox pops can vary, for example the type of questions that can be asked, such as simple questions and adding follow up, unplanned ones to them based on answers.

Vox pops are meant to be open and simple questions that give detailed answers, instead of yes or no ones. There are many other key factors to consider when planning a vox pop, such as:

• Location (fitting to the question)

• Weather (important to consider, if it's bad people will be less likely to stop and talk to you)

• Reluctance of people (people may have somewhere to be, could be abusive too)

• External sounds (background sounds could tamper with audio, if it gets too noisy at one point just stop for a moment and continue after, or repeat the question)

• Clothing (suitable clothing for weather and to not look too intimidating/give off the right impression to people)

• Environment (being aware of surroundings)

• Safety (a large proportion of vox pops nowadays are done solo, you have to be careful that you don't get injured or your equipment potentially getting stolen)

Knowing this information, in groups we then came up with 3 questions to ask the general public when we would be going out later that day. We sent them in afterwards and as one big group looked through them all and worked out which ones would be the best and get us the best results.

Later on, we then prepared everything we needed to ask our question to the public, then went out. As it was also our first time doing vox pops, it felt a bit awkward to approach people at some points, for fear of being ignored or getting abuse. Thankfully everyone we encountered was willing to answer our question and gave us detailed answers, meaning we got to ask a lot of follow up questions and have long audio recordings.

The question that my group asked was:

"Which meal deal do you think is the best for value?"

We had printed out pictures of the Tesco and Greggs meal deals and would ask people which they thought was best for what it cost based on average price per item. With whatever they answered, we would then show them the actual prices and follow up with the question of:

"Knowing the prices of them now, would you still stick with your choice?"

And ask them why they would either stick with the same or choose the other.

We got back in and uploaded all our evidence, which next week we will put together into a small vox pop film, and potentially analyse the positives and negatives of it.