Prithviraj Sukumaran hails technicians: They are superstars

Talking about how film technicians are celebrated in South cinema, Prithviraj told IANS, “Well, for me, cinema is always a team sport. So, an actor's performance can only be good if his co-actors are equally good. And an actor can only be good in a film; I know now that I am a director saying this is a bit modest, but an actor can only be good in a film if the director lets him be good in a film.”

New Delhi: Filmmaker-actor Prithviraj Sukumaran has spoken about the importance of the technicians working on the sets of his films and said that to him, they are the best in the world and tagged them as “superstars.”

Talking about how film technicians are celebrated in South cinema, Prithviraj told IANS, “Well, for me, cinema is always a team sport. So, an actor’s performance can only be good if his co-actors are equally good. And an actor can only be good in a film; I know now that I am a director saying this is a bit modest, but an actor can only be good in a film if the director lets him be good in a film.”

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He said that a “great performance needs to be shot well for people to understand that it is a great performance.”

Prithviraj, who is gearing up for the release of his film “L2: Empuraan,” said that a “great performance can be made to look mediocre.”

“If you have shot the performance in the wrong way. So the technicians who work behind the camera hold that much power over the way the content is served… I believe I have the world’s best team.”

Heaping praise on the people who have brought life to his directorials, such as Lucifer and L2: Empuraan,” Prithviraj said, “I think my chief technicians are world-class. None of them are like, Sitting in Bombay, you might not be able to identify even one single name from that. But to me, they are superstars.”

“They are the world’s best technicians to me.”

He said that he strongly believes he has a “team that can handle a project of any scale, any magnitude, anywhere in the world. And I wanted them to be on stage with me because without them, I was not going to be able to pull this off.”

Prithviraj is sure that if he “changes one of them” and “replaces them” with someone else, “there’s going to be a difference in this film.”

“I don’t know if it’s going to be better or worse, but what I’ve made is not possible with one of them not being there. So on my set, from my associate director to my cinematographer to my production boy, they all have equal ownership over the film,” he said.

Prithviraj revealed that he edits his films on location online.

“And everyone is welcome to come and watch it. When you come to my location in the evenings, when we wrap, you will see everyone, the production boys, the drivers, everyone coming and watching the scene that we shot that day.”

“Because I think they are all part of the process. We all made the film together. Also, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that you’re such a big star, at the top, and doing such fantastic films.”