During nearly every workshop I teach, right at the beginning, I send students out to the street to record vox. Talking to strangers with recording gear a student has barely used can be a harrowing experience — especially, the talking to strangers part. One student told me she sat in her car and cried for half an hour before she found the courage to get out and record interviews. (Of course, once she got over that hump, she was fine for the rest of the semester, which is the point of assigning vox right out of the gate.)
But even if you’ve interviewed strangers on the street a lot, it can still be nerve wracking. I think part of the worry is not wanting to disrupt someone’s day. Then of course, there’s the possibility of being rejected when someone says “nope,” or worse “I don’t trust the media. Don’t want to talk to you,” which, increasingly, is a response my students encounter.
Reporter Catherine Carr says she doesn’t have that problem. Rarely does anyone say no to her after she’s approached them with her recorder. She thinks the positive responses and willingness to engage may have to do with her first question: Where are you going?
Turns out, “Where are you going?” is not only the name of Catherine’s podcast for Loftus Media in the UK, it’s also the only question she has up her sleeve when she starts talking to people. Of course, she’s not solely interested in where someone’s headed. She’s on the hunt for story. What story? She has no idea. None. As she says in the podcast “You never know.” But without an agenda, without a sense of direction for a conversation, it means she needs to be prepared to be infinite in all directions because that’s where the chat may go. And, it means without a focus, she might end up with a pile of nothing tape, right?
That’s not a problem, Catherine says. She just listens for the “breadcrumbs” people leave in a conversation. They’re little hints about what to ask next. Like a conversation she had with a guy in Manchester, England. He answered “Where are you going?” with “Oh, I’m just going home.”
Take a look at the photograph above. Notice that Catherine is not wearing headphones. I told her that’s against the law.
Typically, before I send students out on the street, we talk a lot about what kinds of questions to ask (usually news and date pegs are successful) and how to ask them (start by explaining who you are and what the topic is then ask an open-ended question), but I think next time I may suggest having no agenda. Just start with “Where are you going?” and see where it leads. I suspect it may build listening muscles by forcing students to only work with what the interviewee says. But, for the love of Marconi, wear headphones!
Download a transcript of this episode.
Melanie MacGregor
12.12.23
Hello,
First of all, thank you for this fantastic podcast. I came to it via a Google search on Richard Fidler, who is one of the best interviewers I’ve listened to. I’ve since listened to many of your episodes that talk about interview techniques and my favourite of late is about the podcast Where Are You Going.
You talked with Catherine Carr about why her not wearing headphones is normally “against the law”. I always use headphones when I record my podcast interviews, but they are interviews I do at home, remotely on my laptop, not out in the street. My podcast platform records my guest’s voice and my voice on separate tracks and I wear headphones because I understood that without them I would risk having my voice echoing on the guest’s track (as it gets picked up by their laptop speakers).
I’m very curious to know why headphones are also crucial even if recording out in the street? I can only imagine it is to make sure you aren’t getting too much background noise from traffic etc, but is that a risk even with a good microphone pointed directly at the interviewee (as is the case in the Financial Times photograph of Catherine Carr that you show)?
Many thanks in advance.
Melanie