Influential Figures - Nick Broomfield

Nicholas "Nick” Broomfield (born 30 January 1948) is an English documentary filmmaker. His self-reflexive style has been highly influential, and was adapted by many later filmmakers. Nick first got interested aged 15 when discovering his love for photography on a foreign exchange visit in France. Nick was originally influenced by the observational style of Fred Wiseman, and Robert Leacock and Pennebaker, before moving on largely by accident to the more idiosyncratic style for which he is better known.

Nick Broomfield’s style of work conforms largely to the performative mode of documentary. His earlier work may differ, it wasn’t until 1988 that Broomfield first appeared on camera in his film ‘Driving Me Crazy’ because of a longing to show the process of the making of the documentary, with the dead ends they hit, the failed interviews and the arguments.

In his more modern work, Broomfield has taken up the style of ‘Direct Cinema’ in which he gets non- actors to play themselves in realistic situations based on real events with pre written scripts based on research and actors accounts of what has happened to them. Real locations are used and only a very small documentary crew are involved in the making.

The work of Nick Broomfield has influenced us to not use actors but to find people to play themselves so that in our documentary they can speak from experience and from their own opinion. We think that this will have more of an effect on our target audience because it will show true emotion which would be difficult to show if we had actors that hadn’t experienced the situation in their life.

Nick Broomfield made three very successful documentaries in which is best known for. These three documentaries are ‘Kurt & Courtney’, ‘Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer’ and ‘Biggie and Tupac’. Two of these are crime based documentaries (‘Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer’ and ‘Biggie and Tupac’). Nick Broomfield starred in these documentaries himself which makes them seem more realistic and true to the audience.

Link to our own work

Within our own documentary, we will be following the style of a ‘Direct Cinema’ as we will be getting non-actors to play themselves. The reason that we are doing this is because we believe that non-actors will give a true meaning and understanding of what they are saying which will have more of an impact in comparison to having actors.