A day out vox popping

Well today I finally hit the streets to collect my vox pops. The location was Woden shopping centre, the time was early Saturday afternoon. I placed myself at the entrance of the shopping centre, near the supermarkets.

I wasn't nervous leading up to doing my vox pops but I definitely underestimated how hard they were going to be. I literally thought people would be willing to answer a couple of questions, but many didn't even let me open my mouth. I think the main thing that surprised me was how many looks of distrust my epiroll recieved. Most of the time people would avoid making eye contact with me in favour of looking unfavourably towards the microphone.

I am not naturally shy, so I had no trouble approaching random people. But when I got knocked back the first four times, I must admit I felt a bit disheartened. Sometimes I couldn't drum up the courage for about five minutes, and I would have to wait until I regained my confidence. I soon learned that I would be more successful approaching people who were coming out of the shopping centre, rather than going in. I also waited alot of the time for the person to make eye contact with me, and then I would try and corner them. I think I should have prepared how I would break the ice first, as I kept saying "Are you busy?" and I think that gave people the excuse to brush me off.

Some people were downright rude, like a group of boys I thought I would target due to their age. But there were a number of really nice people, mostly middle-aged, who even though admitting they knew nothing about soccer, were able to answer a few of my questions.

I decided to stick to the "Would you personally go out and support a Canberra team?" and "How do you think the community would react" questions, but I varied them around a bit and kind of made it more natural. Getting a person's attention was the hard part, but when I did achieve this, I found that interviewing them was like having a normal conversation.

I wish I could have gotten a large range of ages, but for some reason, I mostly got people in the middle-aged bracket. I guess this is ok. I was also able to get comment from three different teenagers. Most of my interviewees were white and I would have liked a more multicultural mix, but I guess in a subject like this, a person's background may not affect their view because sport is universal and soccer is the world game.

To be honest, if I had to do a lot of vox pop interviews as part of my work, I would easily fall into depression. I didn't generally enjoy the experience and would not like to do it on a daily basis. I was kind of glad I wasn't doing it for TV though - I feel that it would have been harder. I couldn't believe the distrust associated with the microphone, so I feel having a video camera would have made the task all the more problematic.

Another interesting point was how I represented myself. I was dressed in office attire, as was suggested, but I found it was easier to say I was working on an assignment than a news report. My lecturer had reccomended saying we were a reporter for the UC website, but a few times people looked worringly at me and asked whether it would end up being broadcast. I had to reassure them that it was not. So I think it would be a lot harder if I actually do become a radio journalist and have to do this. I found people were more willing to deal with me when I said I was a student.

I intend to try a few more times. I checked my interviews and they sounded fine quality wise but the tutor reccomended we have about 20 raw interviews, and we use only five. I am considering doing it tomorrow or hiring the epiroll again. But I will see how they turn out in newsboss when I try and edit and find a good angle for the story.