Everything is all about perspective. It’s a lesson I relearned last summer when I had the opportunity to spend the day on the set of a motion picture.
The cinematographer set up a shot of several cast members walking up a flight of stairs in the dark of a Victorian London night. In reality, the shoot took place in the middle of a sunny and very warm California day. Several of us covered all the windows with opaque black paper. With the exception of the cinematic lights, the space was pitch dark with the camera pointing down the stairs to give the impression of the players climbing in uncertain anticipation.
When the director saw the playback, she decided the framing didn’t work. Our intrepid cinematographer digested the feedback, crossed his arms and thought. In less than five minutes, he envisioned several other solutions to give the director what she wanted.
One ended up delivering a scene that was as claustrophobic as it was suspenseful. When I returned for the premiere several months later and saw the finished product on the big screen, it was exactly the puzzle piece needed to ramp up the tension at just the right moment in the story.
Life works the same way. It is a procession of story problems. You won’t always like your circumstances—but you can change your perspective. And that shift? It can change everything. So turn the prism through which you view your current reality. Be a filter, not a sponge. If you feel surrounded by negativity, don’t absorb it. Re-frame it. Rise above it. What you imagine will manifest on the big screen in an amazing way.
Everyone will perceive it a bit differently. But in the end, it will work out in a positive productive way. All of us involved with the film felt it in the tsunami of applause that affirmed the team’s work when the final credits rolled.
Re-frame when you need to. Because how you see the world shapes how the world will respond to you.
