How important is craft in a good film?
Very, very important. You may have good ideas, but if you do not have the craft to express yourself, your idea will fail. What you express is the content. Is content the ‘soul’ of the film? If content is the soul of the film, then craft is the body. Where will you place the soul if you don’t have a body? More than that, the body should have the ability to project the soul. Is technology important to craft? I would say both are interlinked. Only if you are aware of the properties of a lens will you be able to decide which lens should be used for a particular situation. If you leave that to the cameraman, the craft is not yours but the cameraman’s. Similarly, you — the filmmaker — should decide what sound is needed for a particular scene. If you leave that to the sound engineer, it becomes his craft. You are saying that a filmmaker should be an able technician, too? If a filmmaker is not a technician, he is not a filmmaker at all. How do you tell a story? Through the medium of cinema.
