A2 Media Studies - VOX Pop Evaluation

The purpose for my VOX pop evaluation was to critically assess the success of my first research assignment and write a detailed analysis of the decisions I made.

Vox populi (latin) means the voice of the people. Usually the interviewers are shown in public places, and are supposed to be giving spontaneous opinions in a chance encounter. Vox pops are often used on news pogrammes to show 'balance' so it's not biased.

Our aim was to ask each person the same question in order to get a variety of answers and opinions on the given subject.

The questions that we were asked to do were:

1. Do you watch music videos?
2. What is your favrourite music video?
3. What do you like about music videos?
4. What makes a great music video?
5. Where do you watch music videos?

Next I will be critically assessing the questions that we were asked to do during out research as a group.

I believe that the questions were quite simple to understand, they weren't difficult to understand since, all of us were able to andswer them very quickly with a simple answer whether we watched music videos or not, where we watched them and which one was our favrourite music video. I believe that some questions werent detailed enough which meant that they weren't designed to provide us with the answers we required. The first, second and last question weren't designed well to give us a full answer since, all we needed to answer was, "yes we watched music videos" or "no we didn't" which was quite useful because we got a balanced view where everyone said the same thing. The second question only allowed us to answer the name of the song and the artist and the last question got us to answer that most of us watched music videos on the internet; you tube or the television programmes. However, the third and fourth question allowed us to finally answer them in more detail. For the third, we had people talk about how they liked, the dancers in their music videos or the camera shots and lighting and how they caught the best features of the artist. How it makes the music video look like a story because that way it makes it more interesing since, directors are allowed to push boundaries and show their ideas. For the fourth question, we've said that good music and the story of the music video makes a great video. Also, one that does something different and new and adds value to the song, even if the song is bad the video must be better.

Now i will be critically assessing my own technical capabilities when as a group.

For the technical part of this research i had to film a part of the questions. I made sure that the camera as on a tripod to hold it steady and that the person answering the questions were framed in the middle on the camera called a medium shot. We decided to do this because you can see the person clearly and still read what they were saying. Also, we made sure we didn't have anyone answering questions by a window since, they it would cause a siluoutte so, we had them stand by a bilboard. Our sound was used correctly and we kept changing over to try it as, we made sure to the sound softies into the correct holes in the camera in order to record the sound.

Summary

Overall, i'm pleased that all the questions were answered even though, there were some that weren't detailed enough to to the question, however, we did have some answers that were really detailed for my research.Therefore, our VOX pop did provide me with enough research on these questions. Our work was technically secure in a way, the camera position was correct however, one of us in a group had held the sound softies too low, and the support of it; a line, was seen in the video in the corner.