The Office Vox Pops Locations

It would take forever to list everywhere the cutaway vox pops in The Office have taken place, but while on the Dunder Mifflin office floor itself, there seems to be five key places the documentary crew set up for their reaction interviews.

Position 1 is Michael’s office (or other managers), and is the usual place they film his reactions. Sometimes they do that in position 5 too, which is a default setup space for visiting characters mostly, catching them just as they enter or leave the office.

Position 2 is where Jim is most often filmed, in the conference room, looking out onto the car park below. After they get together, this is where both Jim and Pam are filmed.

Position 3, also in the conference room, but angled so as to look back out into the main office, is where Dwight (and most of the other characters) are filmed. Before they get together, this is also Pam’s spot.

But here’s a neat little touch – in the episode where Jim dresses as Dwight, they film his reaction in Dwight’s spot.

For no discernible reason, Position 4, outside the break room, next to a plant, and also overlooking the car park, becomes more and more used as the series moves into the later seasons. I noticed it most in Season 8. Even Jim and other main cast members are filmed here.

There’s a looooong blog to be written about how many camera crews must exist in universe to capture the footage they manage to capture, and it’s a logistical headache. Obviously the show is really shot single camera (maybe A/B), and they plan the filming from the ground up – but in universe there must be at least one crew per main cast member, if not many, many more. It doesn’t happen too often, but I know an episode is lagging when I start thinking about where each camera crew must be set up, or how many must be operating in any given moment.

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