A shot will be responded to by another such that if a figure in a dialogue momentarily disappears as a consequence of a reverse shot, that shot in turn will be countered, and that one countered again and the figures, their presences, and accords with each other re-established as a progression and without a tear.
— Rohdie, 'Montage'
the leader, his driver and the driver's wife (1991)
Nick Broomfield's reverse (counter) shots are intriguing. Normally, in a documentary setting, either the reaction of the documentarian is left out, over-heard, or re-staged in its full opposite. But off the top of my head, I can not remember another's work who consistently includes the image of the documentarian at a farther point along the same axis line / direction as the subject. Not simply panned to by the cinematographer at a climactic moment, but footage of Broomfield casually listening to his subjects speak, taken from the same camera (and more than likely, the same roll of footage - though seconds or minutes before [or after] the actual piece of dialogue has been recorded), and edited into the continuity of the work, as to enhance a certain kind of immersion into the experience. It's by this quiet artificial push, and others like these (take notice at the complexity of his sound design), that Broomfield is allowed to maintain what is essentially being said in the shot / reverse-shot's relationship :: a subjectivized, diary-esque, unfolding of events, in a concentrated period of discovery, using the contemporary material world as a language — understanding there is no objective filmic construction, not even in the genre presumed to be of the real and the objective.
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