Analysis of a relevant News Package

Analysis of a News package: BBC news breakfast (can cannabis help Charlie Hughes epilepsy).

Story:

Figure 1 (Charlie before taking medical Cannabis)

Figure 2  (Charlie 5 months of taking medical cannabis)

• We are introduced to Charlie Hughes where we soon find out that he suffers from infantile seizures caused by epilepsy.
• He was having over 100 seizures a day and the medication that was being provided for him wasn't working.
• Doctors said he wasn't allowed brain surgery as it would not have worked.
• This is when Charlie's parents decided the last option would be to try a cannabis-based oil.
• Charlie started taking CBD earlier this year in February and five months later he's gone from 120 seizures a day to less than 10.
• After being told this information we then find out that Charlie's epilepsy is so bad that it could kill him. 
• CBD oil has changed Charlie's life and has helped his parents not fear the worst for him as he was a ticking time-bomb before he started taking CBD.
• Charlie was given a private prescription, however, it's costing his parents over £1300 a month and their parents are going to run out of money by next January.
• Once they run out of money Charlie goes back to having 120 seizures.
• Parents go on to tell us how other families are having to sell their houses to supply their children with a better life.
• However, Doctors are hesitant about giving away medical cannabis because it hasn't had thorough research.
• This is when a graphic comes onto screen with a quote from NICE, where it states "more clarity around where these medicines can be considered as options for patients as well as identifying where future evidence of their potential benefit is needed".
• We then meet Professor  Mike Barnes from the medical cannabis clinician society who believes that the research is there as many more 1st world countries have legalised cannabis.
• Mike goes on to say that we know that cannabis is safe to use and we know that it doesn't cure illnesses, however, it could help people who are suffering and need pain relief. 
• The Package ends back with Charlie's family looking after him, but because the government are so hesitant about doing more research it could take up to 7 years for them to finally legalise cannabis. However, for charlie's family with how expensive it is now, they might not have a son in 7 years if they don't lower prices for it.

The story during this package was very heartwarming as they really managed to portray how hard it is for this family as they have to watch their son struggle and the government not doing anything to really help. Even though medical cannabis is legal in the UK doctors won't prescribe it for their patients. As a whole, I thought that the use of the more personal clips seen in figure 1 and how the parents had to spend most of their day looking after their ill son. The style the BBC has used to produce this package was a very interesting one to consider for our own project. The way they mixed the interviews with some actuality gave more depth and emotion to the story because by the end of the story we really do feel sorry for this family because it clearly shows that the medicinal cannabis products are working for this family and making their lives stress free. If we have done this it would make our story have that emotional hit to make the audience think more about the story we are trying to tell. Therefore it will hopefully persuade the government to look into cannabis now before it's too late.

Casting:

Figure 3 

Figure 4 

The only 'cast' members in this package are the family who is having to spend a lot of money to try and help their son's epilepsy and expert Professor Mike Barnes. Even though all the contributors had the same argument that they wanted medicinal cannabis to be more available for the public to use. Using the family was a smart move as it added more emotional value to the piece to make the audience talk about the situation. Seeing the families struggles before using the medicinal cannabis was quite hard to watch and you could only imagine what their lives would've been like if our government made it illegal. They also managed to interview professor Mike Barnes who is a Neurologist and also is apart of the medical cannabis clinician society, who believes that the UK should be more lenient in giving medical cannabis to patients. However, doctors and other members of the government think we need to put more research into the long-term side effects of cannabis. However, his argument is that the research is out there and it proves that this drug is safe to use as many other 1st world countries have legalised it and have the statistics needed to prove to our government that it does work for some people. He also made it clear that cannabis will not cure any disease, but will help ease pain and other diseases like Parkinson and epilepsy.

Graphics:

Figure 5 

There are only a few graphics used during this package and all of the ones used really help build up the story and didn't give irrelevant information to the audience. All of the graphics were text-based, which included quotes from NICE which helped explain why our government are hesitant to prescribe medical cannabis. They don't go overboard with all different graphic because if they did that it would've ruined the emotional value the piece has by distracting the audience from Charlie's story. Personally, I would prefer our news package to have minimum graphics just like this one because I don't wont to distract the audience I only want to use graphics if they help the narrative flow I don't want to use pointless graphics because A it's time consuming and B there's no point in having them if they don't help the story.

Location:

There are only 2 locations used throughout the whole package and that's the families house and a park near Newcastle University. Using the families house made that part of the package have more of emotional value to the story. Being filmed in a controlled environment meant that the shots that were produced were lit properly and that there wasn't any unwanted background noise. Whereas, with the interview with Mike Barnes they went to a local park, which is something I didn't like. This is because they tell us that he's involved with all these cannabis communities, however, we never see this. With the audience never seeing this they could find it hard to believe that he's involved with cannabis societies.

This is something we definitely need to consider for the news package, we need to be in a controlled environment so we can make everything look clean and polished even before we start editing the package together. Therefore, when it comes to finding interviewees we need to have a recce of the location so we know any problems before filming, so we can solve them.

Conclusion:

Finally, I believe this package contains really useful techniques that we could transfer into the package we're trying to produce. Using locations that are controlled really appealed to me as we can make it look really nice a polished even before the edit, which is the best way to go around it as we don't want to rely on 'fixing it in post'. I didn't like the filming outside in a park because I felt it be irrelevant to the story, this is why we need to have good locations to help build our narrative. Also having really good contributors helped the BBC have that emotional value that we're trying to achieve. We want the audience to see that there are people out there really struggling and they have no other option but to go for medical cannabis, but because our government feel to need to do really in-depth research.


Havard reference

Breakfast (2019) [videorecording] Channel One HD At: https://estream.ucreative.ac.uk/View.aspx?id=31811~5b~suonmEL6QY (Accessed on 1 November 2019).