Vox populi is the voice of the people, or ‘man in the street’ interview. It’s a different kind of interviewing from that discussed in the previous chapter, but the use of the opinions of ‘ordinary’ members of the public adds a useful dimension to the coverage of a topic that might otherwise be limited to a straight bulletin report or a studio discussion among officials or experts. The principle is for the broadcaster using a portable recorder to put one, possibly two, specific questions on a matter of public interest to people selected by chance, and to edit together their replies to form a distillation of the overall response. While the aim is to present a sample of public opinion, the broadcaster must never claim it to be statistically valid, or even properly representative. It can never be anything more than ‘the opinions of some of the people we spoke to today’. This is because gathering material out on the streets for an afternoon magazine programme will almost certainly over-represent shoppers, tourists and the unemployed; and be low on businessmen, motorists, night shift workers and farmers! Since the interviewing is done at a specific time and generally at a single site, the sample is not really even random – it is merely unstructured and no one can tell what the views obtained actually represent. So no great claim should be made for the sample ‘vox pop’ on the basis of its being truly ‘the voice of the people’.
It is easier to select a specific grouping appropriate to a particular topic – for example, early risers, commuters, children or lorry drivers. If the question is to do with an increase in petrol prices, one will find motorists, together with some fairly predictable comments, on any garage forecourt. Similarly, a question on medical care might be addressed to people coming out of a hospital. Incidentally, many apparently public places – such as hospitals, shopping malls, schools, and even railway stations – are in fact private property and the broadcaster should remember that he or she has no prescriptive right to work there without permission.
Figure 9.1 A vox pop in Northern India using a Zoom H1. A windshield is advised when recording outside (Photo: Kevin Keegan, FEBC)
As the question to which reaction is required becomes more specific, the group among which the interviews are carried out may be said to be more representative. Views on a particular industrial dispute can be canvassed among the pickets at the factory gate, opinions on a new show sought among the first-night audience. Nevertheless it is important in the presentation of vox pop material that the listener is told where and when it was gathered. There must be no weighting of the interview sample of which the listener is unaware. Thus the introductory sentence, ‘We asked the strikers themselves what they thought’ may mislead by being more comprehensive than the actual truth. A more accurate statement would be: ‘We asked some of the strikers assembled at the factory gate this morning what they thought.’ It is longer, but brevity is no virtue at the cost of accuracy.
Having decided to include a vox pop in the programme, the producer or the designated reporter must decide carefully the exact form of words to be used. The question is going to be addressed to someone with little preparation or ‘warm-up’ and so must be relatively simple and unambiguous. Since the object is to obtain opinions rather than a succession of ‘yes/no’ answers, the question form must be carefully constructed. Once decided, the same question is put each time, otherwise the answers cannot sensibly be edited together. A useful question form in this context is: ‘What do you think of . . . ?’ This will elicit an opinion which can if necessary be followed with the interviewer asking ‘Why?’ – this supplementary to disappear in the editing.
‘What do you think of the proposal to raise the school-leaving age?’
‘It sounds all right but who’s going to pay for it?’
‘I think it’s a good idea, it’ll keep the youngsters out of mischief.’
‘It’ll not do me any good, will it?’
‘Bad in the short term, good in the long.’
(‘Why?’)
‘Well, it’ll cause an enormous upheaval over teachers’ jobs and classrooms and things like that, but it’s bound to raise standards overall eventually.’
‘I’ve not heard anything about it.’
‘The cost! – and that means higher taxes all round.’
‘I don’t think it’ll make much difference.’
(‘Why?’)
‘Because for those children who want to leave and get a job it’ll be a waste and the brighter ones would have stayed on anyway.’
‘I think it’s a load of rubbish, there’s too much education and not enough work.’
It is important that the question is phrased so that it contains the point to which reaction is required. In this example reference is made to the proposal to raise the school-leaving age, to which people can respond even if they had not heard about it. This is much better than asking ‘What do you think of the government’s new education policy?’
In addition to testing opinion, the vox pop can be used to canvass actual suggestions or collect facts, but where the initial response is likely to be short, a follow-up is essential. This question can be subsequently edited out. For example: ‘Who is your favourite TV personality?’ The answer is followed by asking: ‘Why?’
Another example, this time for children:
‘What’s the best thing about school?’
And then: ‘Why would you say this is?’
It is undoubtedly true that the more complex and varied the questioning, the more difficult will be the subsequent editing. The vox pop producer must remember that the process is not about conducting an opinion poll or assembling data, but making interesting radio which has to make sense in its limited context. The second example here may be useful in allowing the listener to compare his or her own schooldays with the views of current schoolchildren.
A characteristic of the vox pop is that in the final result, the interviewer’s voice does not appear. The replies must be such that they can be joined together without further explanation to the listener, and hence the technique is distinguished from simply a succession of interviews. The conversations should not be so complex that the interviewee’s contribution cannot stand on its own.
Children’s voices can be especially engaging in this context. However, it is too easy for an adult interviewer to be thought to be too dominating, even intimidating, in this respect. It is wise to put in place a few safeguards here. First, in Britain it is a legal requirement not to interview children under 16 without their parents’ permission. Talking to a group is therefore best done within a family, or perhaps a school classroom, which obviously requires the permission of the teaching staff. This cannot be done on the spur of the moment but takes time to set up. Second, established Codes of Practice prohibit asking children about private family matters or for opinions on areas likely to be beyond their judgement. Third, as with any interviewee, level eye contact is needed so one sits down among the group. Fourth, unless the children know you, there will be some warm-up time when they can get used to you and the recorder. Fifth, with a mixed group of boys and girls it is sensible to have interviewers of both sexes present to do the questioning, and another adult to see that no pressure is imposed on the children. When children are brought into the studio, they should always be accompanied by their own independent chaperone.
If vox pop questioning is to be carried out among a specific group, this may itself dictate the place – football fans at a match, shoppers at the market, holiday travellers at the airport, etc. If the material is to be gathered generally, the site or sites chosen will be limited by technical factors, so as to permit easy editing at a later stage. These are to do with a reasonably low but essentially constant level of background noise.
The listener expects to hear some background actuality and it would be undesirable to exclude it altogether. However, in essence, the broadcast is to consist of snatches of conversation in the form of remarks made off-the-cuff in a public place, and under these conditions immediate intelligibility is more difficult to obtain than in the studio. A side street will be quieter than a main road but a constant traffic background is preferable to intermittent noise. For this reason the interviewing site should not be near a bus stop, traffic lights or other road junction – the editing process becomes intrusively obvious if buses are made to disappear into thin air and lorries arrive from nowhere. Similarly, the site should be free from any sound which has a pattern of its own, such as music, public address announcements, or a chiming clock. Editing the speech so that it makes sense will be difficult enough without having to consider the effect of chopping up the background. A traffic-free pedestrian precinct or shopping mall is often suitable, but a producer should avoid always returning to the same place – one of the attractions of the vox pop, in the general form as well as in the individual item, is its variety.
The recorder should be tested before leaving base, and on site a further check made to ensure an adequate speech level against the background noise. It’s useful to record some 10 seconds of general atmosphere to provide spare background for editing the fades in and out. From here on, the recording level control should not be altered otherwise the level of the background noise will vary. In order to maintain this same background level, any AGC should be switched out. Different speech volumes are compensated for by the positioning of the microphone relative to the speaker, and of course the normal working distance will be considerably less than in a studio.
It may be possible to simplify the editing by recording only the replies. A machine with a rapid and unobtrusive means of starting is therefore a considerable asset. This may be done by holding the machine on ‘pause’ until required.
If using a smartphone don’t forget to have spare batteries, a spare card, a windshield of some sort and headphones (for details see pp. 103, 131).
It is normal for the novice reporter to feel shy about his or her first vox pop but cases of assault on broadcasters are relatively rare. It might be helpful to remember that the passer-by is being asked to enter the situation without the benefit of any prior knowledge and is probably far more nervous. However, the initiative lies with the interviewer who needs to adopt a friendly and positive technique. So, explain quickly who you are and what you want, put the question and record the reaction.
First, the reporter should be obvious rather than secretive. Stand in the middle of the pavement holding the microphone for all to see. It is helpful for the microphone to carry an identifying badge so that the approaching pedestrian can already guess at the situation and, if necessary, take avoiding action. No one should be, or for that matter can be, interviewed against their will. Any potential but unwilling contributors should not be pursued or in any way harassed. In this sense, although the interviewer may receive the occasional rebuff, the contributors are only those who agree to stop and talk.
Seeing a prospective interviewee, the reporter approaches and says pleasantly ‘Good morning. I’m from Radio XYZ.’ At this the passer-by will either continue, protesting at being too busy, or will stop, being reassured by the truth of the statement since it confirms the station identification badge. The interviewee may possibly also be interested at the prospect of being on the radio. The reporter continues, ‘Can I ask you what you think of the proposal to keep all traffic out of the city centre?’, at which point the interviewer moves the microphone to within a foot or so of the contributor and switches on the recorder. In the chapter on interviewing, questions that began with ‘Can I ask you’ or ‘Could you tell me’ were generally disallowed on the grounds that they were superfluous; permission for the interview having already been granted, and that being unnecessary they were a waste of the listener’s time. In the context of the vox pop, however, such a preamble is acceptable since it allows someone the courtesy of non-cooperation, and in any case the phrase will disappear in the editing.
The normal reaction of the ‘man in the street’ will vary from total ignorance of the subject, through embarrassed laughter and a collecting of thoughts, to a detailed or impassioned reply from someone who knows the subject well. All of this can be useful but there is likely to be a wastage rate of at least 50 per cent. If about 10 replies are to be used, then 20 should be recorded. If the final result is to be around two minutes – and a vox pop would seldom if ever exceed this – a total of four or five minutes of response should be recorded, by which time the interviewer will hope to have a diversity of views and some well-made argument.
Occasionally a group of people will gather round and begin a discussion. This might be useful, although inevitably some of it will be ‘off-mic’. A developing conversation will be more difficult to edit and the ‘one at a time’ approach is to be preferred although, particularly with children, more revealing comment is often obtained if they are within a group talking among themselves.
Whatever the individual response, the interviewer remains friendly and courteous, obviously wanting to give a good impression of the radio station. It’s important to avoid becoming sidetracked into a discussion of the subject itself, station policy or last night’s programme. End by thanking each contributor for taking the trouble to stop and talk, remembering that it is they who have done you a favour.
Spontaneity, variety, insight and humour – these are the hallmarks of the good vox pop. Listening to the material back at the base studio, the first step is to remove anything that is not totally intelligible. This must be done immediately, before the editor’s ear becomes attuned to the sound. It is a great temptation to include a prize remark, however imperfectly recorded, on the basis of its being intelligible after a few playings under studio conditions! The rejection of material that is not of first-class technical quality is the first prerequisite to preventing the finished result from becoming a confusing jumble. Using a digital recorder or smartphone with a suitable app, it might be possible to rearrange the recorded tracks and do some preliminary editing before getting back to the studio. This requires care, however, since it is easy, in a hurry, to erase wanted material. In fact at this stage it’s best not to erase anything, but simply to mark the usable responses. Back at base, the material is downloaded and given its final edit.
Figure 9.3 Recording with an Android smartphone: location recording on the left and on-screen editing on the right
The first piece of the finished vox pop needs to be a straightforward, clearly understood response to the question that will appear in the introductory cue. The subsequent comments are placed to contrast with each other, either in the opinions expressed or their style. Men’s voices will alternate with those of women, the young with the old, the local accent with the ‘foreign’, the ‘pros’ with the ‘antis’. The interviewer’s voice is not used, except that occasionally it might be useful to be reminded of the question halfway through. What must be avoided, of course, is its continual repetition. Sometimes the answers themselves are similar, in which case sufficient should be used to indicate a consensus but not to become boringly repetitious. A problem can arise over the well-argued but lengthy reply that would be likely to distort the shape of the vox pop if used in its entirety. A permissible technique here is to use it in two or three sections, placing them separately within the final piece.
The editor needs a good comment to end on. Its nature will depend on the subject but it might be a view forcefully expressed, a humorous remark, or the kind of plain truth that often comes from a child. Good closing comments are not difficult to identify and the interviewer, after collecting the material, generally knows how the vox pop will end. The spare background noise can be used as required to separate replies, with a few seconds at the beginning and at the end as a ‘fade up’ and ‘fade down’ under speech – so much better than ‘banging it in’ and ‘chopping it off’ on the air.
It should go without saying that the finished vox pop will broadly reflect the public response found by the interviewer. It is possible, of course, for the editing to remove all views of a particular kind, so giving the impression that they do not exist. It may be that a producer would set out with the deliberate intention of demonstrating the overwhelming popularity of certain public attitudes – presumably those that the interviewer or reporter favours. Such manipulation, apart from betraying the trust that hopefully the listener has in the process, is ultimately self-defeating. Listeners do their own vox pops every day of their lives – they will know whether or not the radio station is biased in its reflection of public opinion. Probably more than the broadcaster, the listener knows reality when he or she hears it.
Used properly the vox pop represents another colour in the broadcaster’s palette. It provides contrast with studio material and, in reflecting accurately what people are saying, it helps the listener to identify with the station and so enhances its credibility. The website illustrates the technique with an example of ‘raw’ and edited vox pop.