A lo-fi heist film bolstered by dynamic and intimate camera work, director Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” delights in simply seeing two people go to war. Sir Ian McKellan plays Julian Sklar, a master painter who is contemplating his legacy, having not completed a series of famed portraits (the titular Christophers). His opportunistic children, Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning), hire master forger and closeted artist, Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), to act as Julian’s housekeeper, complete the Christophers, so that they can be “discovered” upon Julian’s passing.

Lori is employed by Julian easily enough, but what neither of them expects is the way their cat and mouse is the launchpad for deeper conversations around the process of making art and who gets to own our work after we pass. It often feels as though Soderbergh and screenwriter Ed Solomon are using the bickering and moments of sincerity between these characters as mouthpieces for their own musings. For Soderbergh, one conviction he’s sure of is that, as much as people may want to imitate the style of some of his greatest hits, he hopes that a big part of his legacy can be the way in which he made his films.

“Honestly, if you were to say, ‘You get to pick between your influence being the way that you work or the work itself,’ I wouldn’t hesitate to go, ‘Please be influenced by the way that I work.’ I would be happier if they took the methodology as opposed to the result,” he shared. Soderbergh spoke with RogerEbert.com about how some of the most striking sequences in the film were born from trying to find solutions to problems, how he resists easy itemization and characterization, and how he sees a core part of his artistry involving stress testing the new technologies at his disposal. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Whether it is the “Oceans” films or “Logan Lucky,” you revel in depicting characters in the throes of process and problem-solving. Was there a “problem” you were trying to solve while making “The Christophers?” The challenge was to keep it visually interesting without being distracting and coming from a place of insecurity. I kept reminding myself, “We have good text, we have great actors, you don’t have to tart this thing up.” I would say the most noticeable gimmick that I employed, which I hope is something the audience feels more than they know explicitly, is that as soon as you cross the threshold into Julian’s house, everything is through a handheld camera lens.

Whenever we’re outside the house, we’re in “studio mode” or in sequences where Julian is not present. That was the largest directorial concept it needed. It’s not a very overt thing, but psychologically for the viewer, it creates the same sense of instability that Lori steps into Julian’s house.

Ultimately, the challenge was just to stay on point with that approach and not engage in any kind of trickery. Speaking of trickery, it was only in reading other interviews that I learned that the interiors and exteriors for the house were different locations. That was the goal.

The other aspect was that when I was making the film and looking at cut material, I’d do minor recalibrations a couple of times a week. That “interview” scene with Lori was a sequence that we shot twice. We shot it the first time on a Friday, and then over the weekend, I talked to Ed, and I said, “Let’s do that again.” When we first shot it, the day had been structured in such a way that we’d shot all these other sequences except for that one.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when we started shooting that, and it was a bit too late in the day to start a scene of that length and significance. I wanted it to be fresher. Ed shared at Lincoln Center that when the scene cuts away to Lori putting her face in her hands amidst Julian’s monologue was a moment that came from going through the scene again.

Yeah, I wanted to go back and make more explicit both of her wondering what she’s gotten herself into. It’s also the dropping of the mask for a moment for the audience’s benefit. That way, we see that she is really putting on a performance in the same way Julian is.

Julian has a performative personality, which is why it’s so fun to see Ian playing that part, but that addition is an example of the kind of real-time calibration where, with my collaborators, we’re extracting everything that’s there in the scene to be emphasized. You’ve offered the work of John Schlesinger, particularly “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and Peter Yates’ 1983 film “The Dresser” as some launch pad for influences. I’m curious how those manifested in “The Christophers.” Those are both extremely well-directed movies, but not in a flashy way or in a way that a regular audience would notice.

Anybody who makes films would be struck by the sense of craft and how the performances are front and center. They’re also examples of egoless direction; you can tell Yates and Schlesinger’s attitude is like “