What I’m still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.

Abrams is describing the professional and artistic recalibration required when moving from television to feature filmmaking. Television production often emphasizes speed, coverage, dialogue-driven scenes, and continuity across episodes, while cinema tends to demand more deliberate visual storytelling—composition, camera movement, scale, and the expressive use of image and sound to carry meaning. By admitting he is “still grappling,” he frames cinematic thinking as a learned discipline rather than an automatic upgrade in medium. The remark also signals humility: even a successful TV creator must consciously retrain habits to exploit film’s distinct language and audience expectations.