A few weeks ago I was sitting in a room with about 20 people. The third-floor windows faced out Northeast-ish toward the San Gabriel mountains that are just outside of Los Angeles, and I remember we had been through another run of crazy, violent rain in California that had made last year’s El Niño look like…well, not El Niño.
Now if you’ve ever spent time in Southern California you know the sunset hours are pretty damn awesome. During a break in the rain, just like a scene out of a movie, the clouds broke up to show off one of those orange-purple-yellow-red-the sky is on fire sunsets that you can never get sick of and then boom, easily the brightest rainbow any of us had ever seen dropped out of the sky. Just like in the movies, the room went dead quiet until one guy, Graham, broke the silence. “Guys! We live on EARTH.” It was the most profound yet appropriately simple thing I’d heard in ages. Holy crap, we do live on Earth.
It’s funny how often we scroll through an Instagram feed and think the most breathtaking view has to be halfway across the globe. Sometimes, if you’re paying attention at the right moment, it’s right outside your window. But sometimes you just need to look at something familiar from a totally new perspective. Formations is a short film about that last idea. Beautiful landscapes that might otherwise seem “normal,” just looked at from a slightly unfamiliar perspective. Most of this film is filled with bird’s eye view footage of mountain ranges, the ocean, and coastlines that will honestly make you think and watch with the same excitement as my friend Graham. And I think that’s a pretty good practice; just being in awe of how cool the world looks every once in a while.
“Guys! We live on Earth!”
