Nicola's first production was a documentary on crime writer James Ellroy's search for his mother's murderer, White Jazz. From this, she went on to produce and direct the series Post Mortem, about genius and illness, examining the lives and works of Beethoven, Virginia Woolf, Nijinsky, Montgomery Clift and Francis Bacon. In the late 1990s, she produced and directed the pop-promo series Mirrorball,
featuring profiles on Spike Jonze, Mike Mills, Roman Coppola, Michel Gondry and Dawn Shadforth. Black then went on to direct and produce a series of documentaries for Channel 4, including Designer Vaginas (2002), Bone Breakers (2002), When Freddie Met Kenny (2002), Snorting Coke With The BBC [2] (2003), Banned in the UK and Banned Films, the latter presented by Tim Roth (2005), both were shown as part of the Channel 4 Banned season - which Black co-devised. Since 2001, Black ran and produced Channel 4's digital animation scheme Mesh, producing four digital animations a year. In 2007, Black produced Potapych: The Bear Who Loved Vodka, which won a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Animated Film
