Vox Pop Update

I finished editing both vox pop videos. It was harder than I thought to get people to speak for me on camera. Most of them were alright with me interviewing them probably thinking I was doing a survey, but when they saw the camera (which wasn't even that scarry..Canon 5D with 50mm lens) they just froze and apologized for not being able to help me.

And the ones that did stop to speak to me found my question very difficult: "How would you define culture?". I didn't think it would be this puzzling but it turned out to be quite a challenge for most people. Therefore my video will show just how puzzled and confused people are by the word Culture and then invite them at our Culturae Mundi (Cultures of the World) events, which is the aim of the project anyway.

I did finish the video but it is too long so I need to edit it a bit more.

The second day was easier as I only needed people to say the sentence 'Bringing cultures of the world together' in their own languages, which they really enjoyed. Still for both videos most people filmed are friends of mine who were passing by, or someone I simply new from other jobs or projects, very few actually being passers by. Still I don't believe this is an issue as it's in no way a personal project, or has any ethical implications. Plus I had consent forms signed by everyone, friend or not, just to make sure I won't have any problems.

And here is the second one!

Culturae Mundi Project

CU International Experience Mobility Service are starting a new project called Culturae Mundi whose aim is to promote multiculturalism in the University to start with and I am part of it! My role is to look over the production side of things, such as filming the events organised by the project or the CUSU societies associated with it.

My first project is to make two promotional videos under the format of Vox Pop (people's voices) for which I ask one question to members of the public from the streets of Cov.

I took this video made by my friend and former MA Media Pro student Russell Whitehead, who did a Vox Pop about freedom

Mine will be about Culure, asking people to define culture. It wasn't as easy as I expected it to be. First of all just when I was about to start the interviews I realized I should probably have a consent form as this video will be used as an official promo video for the project, so I ran to the library and made one. When I finally got to the filming part, I didn't have much response from the public; fortunately there were quite few people I knew around so I asked them to do it in exchange of a lolly pop :).

But then going onto the actual interviews, the question 'How would you define culture?' was harder than I though for the people. I was thinking that I would get quite interesting and varied answers but most of them were just saying that it's a hard question, and were struggling to find an answer. So I will try to work with the material I have; I have 11 interviews so should be able to get something out of them. I think I will turn it around and show how confused people are about what culture is and say the our group has the answer and promote it as 'Come to our events and you'll find out what culture is!'