Friday, 11 July 2014

Documentary Analysis

Documentary One: "Should weed be legalised in the England?" by Sukhijander Kaur

The topic of this documentary is to determine whether the cannabis drug should become legal in England. The angle of this topic is somewhat biased because Sukhi's point of view is agreeing with the idea in question.  

The key issues in this documentary were:
  • What cannabis does the brain and what the side effects were 
  • What the public thought of the idea
  • What would be the aftermath if it was legalised
The persons in this documentary that were interviewed were Kiran Virdee, who played a drug user, Gavin Dhillon, who played a drug dealer and members of the public. In the interviews between Kiran and Sukhi (1:43), they discussed how weed cannabis affected her and why she uses it. She explained that she had asthma and ever since smoking the drug, she hasn't had an attack for 4 years. 
With Gavin Dhillon (4:28), Sukhi asked him how long he had been selling 'weed' and he replied with 5 years indicating he had started 'shooting' or selling drugs from the age of 12. She also asked him if it was a good or bad idea for it to be illegal, he stated that it would be "good and bad".  It would be good due to the freedom of it and quantity of buyers, but it would be bad because his 'job' would be affected if it was legal because buyers wouldn't need to meet dealers if cannabis could be purchased in a local shop. The interviewer also asked members of the public about it and asked if it should be legal, this was to make the show look un-biased and more professional.

The role of the presenter was to understand why people use cannabis and to interview people and ask them what they thought about the idea in question and to get an overall answer.  Sukhi, who was the presenter,  also was the interviewer, director and producer of the documentary. 

In this documentary, the interviewer stated some facts about cannabis at the beginning (0:44) and got some opinions of the public and her interviewees (5:30)  in the documentary. 

The facts that were presented in this documentary were:

  • What the other names for cannabis were
  • What is does the the brain and body
  • Where cannabis comes from
  • What type of drug it is
The opinions that were presented in this documentary were balanced, the good opinions were:

  • It reduces asthma attacks
  • Increases the amount of buyers
  • Better than alcohol
  • It would be controlled
  • Is better than cigarettes
the bad opinions were:
  • It has many bad factors
  • Affects the dealers income
  • Price of cannabis would decrease
  • Makes people do uncalled for and crazy things
  • Some of the side effects are bad
The were more opinions than facts in this documentary because the interviewer asked different people about what they thought about it and they gave mixed answers. The facts shown in the documentary were vague, she stated information that the majority of people know already so some facts wasn't very interesting.