In a 1979 interview with Charton Heston in Conversations at the American Film Institute with The Great Moviemakers, he has this to say about technology:
Technology has given us so much more opportunity to do unusual things that you couldn’t do with a camera before. The equipment is lighter, more portable; the film is faster, the lenses are faster. Everything is more readily available to you, and directors sometimes tend to get caught up in exclaiming how wonderful a shot is. But what is it about? How does it serve the story? I remember something Wyler taught me. I had come back from seeing some film and was saying how well directed I thought it was, and he said, “You have to be careful with that. If everybody says, ‘Isn’t that well directed?’ it means they weren’t paying attention to the story.” The direction should not call attention to itself. Neither should the acting or the writing.
This quote is even more true today and there are many more aspects of film production we can add to this list: color correction, motion graphics, computer generated imagery and effects. We can even add other industries that are affected by this thought: design, web development, app and software development, video games.
It all comes back to story. Want to stand out? Tell a story that really matters and affects people. Everything should serve that central goal, not the other way around.