For my Audio Vox Pop Assignment I was given the task of producing a vox pop that displayed young people talking about ‘Student Life’. For my vox pop I decided that I would interview students about the financial aspects of student life. I used open ended questions such as “how would you describe your financial situation at university” so that I could diversify the answers that i would receive.

Regarding health and safety, I was lone working however this was not an issue as I was working on campus. I was contemplating interviewing on the roadside next to campus, therefore I would have to be aware of traffic as failure to do so could bare fatal consequences for myself. I also made sure that when interviewing a person on a corridor, I would try to interview them on the side of the corridor and not in the middle as this would also present a risk of my interviewee having a person collide with them. I was aware that I would be held responsible for my interviewee’s well-beings.

Before recording I also decided to find an ideal location to record, I did this by recording my assignment partner in various locations such as the courtyard and the cafeteria. I eventually decided on using the hallway outside the cafeteria as the courtyard was too windy, despite the use of a windshield. The cafeteria was also very loud as I was recording on a busy lunchtime. I found that the hallway outside of the cafeteria was an ideal place to record as there was a light amount of background noise which was okay as it didn’t drown out the people that I was trying to record.

I asked a total of 15 people about how they were coping with the financial aspects of student life. In the edit, I had a lot of content to filter through and I made the decision to not include 7 of my interviewees. I feel that this was a good decision as their answers were generic and if I were to keep them in it would have made my Vox Pop sound repetitive.

Retrospectively, I could have asked follow-up questions to my interviewees as this would have provided more detail to their answers. I could have also asked some of my interviewees to rephrase their answers as this would have saved me time in the editing phase of the vox-pop task.

When deciding my background music, I opted for a piece of music that was light and positive because many of the responses that I received were given in a positive tone. I also made sure to adjust the volume of the backing track to a lower level so that it did not distract from the content of the vox-pop.

On reflection, this exercise was successful. I believe this was because I interviewed more people than the brief required which allowed me more material to choose from when editing.