The biggest challenge faced when completing the Video Vox Pop was the issue of making everything portable and not having one set location. As a result of this, the risk assessment was more challenging because I not only had to take into consideration the risks for the crew and the possible cast but also the public.
The main thing considered when carrying out the risk assessment was not blocking public access, I believed this was crucial in ensuring people would want to talk to us: if we were trying to be polite when asking people to speak to us it would make no sense to block there way and possibly make them angry and immediately put off from talking to us. Besides the problems it may cause us, there are some serious risks that could be linked to blocking public access, for example blocking peoples escape routes should there be some kind of access, or something like generally being a public nuisance. As a result of this, the locations we chose were still busy areas, but we placed ourselves outside of the direct walking path: near some benches, towards the edge of the path, etc.
Working well collaboratively was essential for this task as there was only two of us and a lot of work to do. In order to do this successfully, we took it in turns to fulfil the roles, one of us would find an interviewee and ask them questions while the other set up the camera and ensured the audio levels were correct. This worked well, as we both got to have experience with the tech side and the interviewing side, it split the work load equally and resulted in some good footage being obtained. It was also essential to guarantee that when an interviewee agreed to take part, we were entirely ready to go straight away, this makes it more professional, less time consuming for us and the interviewee and ensures we are not rushing and therefore making mistakes. To do this, we had pre-written our parts of the contributor forms we used so that the contributor only had to add their name, contact details and signature. This meant we had written confirmation of their willingness to participate, were prepared and also professional.
An important decision that was made was to shoot the clips in a conventional way; to have the subject stood to one side of the camera and give them looking space to one side so it looks as if they are talking to someone and not just the camera. We varied the side the subjects stood at whilst shooting as we realised that would give us some smooth transitions that would look polished in post-production. To maintain the style of the subject looking like they were speaking to someone and not just to the camera, the person asking the questions stood just to the side of the camera and kept eye contact whilst encouraging the subject to talk.