Man with a camera (Vertov, 1929) provides us with an insight into documentary which, although avant-garde in style, offers views of a utopian society in which the people work towards the good of a nation. The film envisages Vertov's dominant beliefs in marxist theory, coupled with the desires of his producers to highlight the effectiveness of soviet achievement through film. Hence although appearing non-linear in its' narrative structure and edited form, the film can still arguably be interpreted as ultimately linear; there are no options for the audience to directly intervene and edit the order, frame or construction of the film, as it exists in a progressive, set form. However, Vertov was limited by the technology of the era. Having not been experimented with fully in the 1920's, Vertov's use of film was ground-breaking; using technological advances in editing; most of which he pioneered to engage an audience in interpreting images by themselves. Without a voice-over, Vertov's film asked an audience to re-imagine the conventional narrative of cinema (which utilised text plates in order to narrate). Albeit restricted to using the imagination of the audience as a basis for narrative interactivity, Man with camera would appear to have much in common with its' modern counterpart, the interactive documentary.
In direct contrast almost seventy years later, Nick Broomfield emerged as a skilful manipulator of the documentary form. Whilst demonstrating juxtapositions between sound and visuals, and contrasting visuals against his uniform and unaffected narration, his use of a rigid narrative can be seen in Biggie and Tupac, (Broomfield, 2002) seen above. His direct participation in all of his documentaries (as the sound and boom operator) is used to great effect to create the sense of an 'on the fly' narrative, where it is to be assumed that he arrives in a location and tries to actively investigate as much as possible 'on camera'. Broomfield's appeal largely exists upon the premise that Nick Broomfield the crew-member on screen exists in a different paradigm than that on Nick Broomfield the documentary maker. In a similar way to how interactive documentaries utilise a narrative largely comprised of information chosen and comprehended by the user; Broomfield's documentaries ask viewers to decipher parts of the story themselves. Broomfield's unwitting on-screen persona often clashes with a more pre-meditated and post-reactive voiceover narration, which require viewers to pull together aspects of Broomfield's rough cinema verite style; which have been described as "exercises in complete chaos" (Bruzzi, 2004, p208).
This brings into question whether Broomfield is indeed the master of his own documentary narratives; fuelling participants on with his own flamboyancy, posing the question of whether his films are a result of "dialectical negotiation between the reality that existed before he arrived and that which subsequently becomes the subject of his films" (Bruzzi, 2004, p208). Above, Broomfield mentions his origins as a stills photographer; using images which let the viewer decide the argument, rather than motion picture, with which he has had to learn to construct narrative himself (Broomfield, 2009).
