Flaming Arrows

Happy New Year everyone! Did you have an exciting night? After a days work (yep, I went into work on the 31st), we headed out to our visual effect supervisors New Years Eve gathering up in the Santa Monica mountains, roughly 30-40 minutes outside of town. He has a great domain up there, where you can actually see the stars! It became a fairly windy night, but not before we were able to get some pyrotechnics in.

After driving down Kanan-Dume, we turned onto a nondescript lane, with a wrought iron gate. After hitting the correct sequence of buttons, we entered the 'compound' and drove for about 5 minutes through a blacked-out, single lane road, into the 'facility'. In my small car it was fairly easy, but very slow going. I even had to crane by neck out further to make sure I would be able to take some of the hairpins! Once we got there, we parked in the main parking lot, with overflow parking just to the south. It was an impressive location. We walked up to the home and were greeted by our supervisor and his wife, and were left to fend for ourselves with late night food and alcohol. Being the designated driver for the evening, I was content with the gratifying effects of Red Bull! We hung out for a little while before more of our brethren from Digital Domain showed up, and we relaxed until midnight, when the real festivities began! We started off with a bucket of arrows, of which the tips were lit, and then the audience fired upon hydrogen filled balloons. These produced a sweet explosive and temporary flame up, which the embers were reduced to ashes by the time they hit the ground. These weren't small balloons, by any means. More like industrial size ones, of between 3-6 feet in diameter. Impressive pyrotechnics! We were also treated to some roman candles and fireworks on the deck, before the wind picked up and slowed it down a notch. All in all a very good evening, and we ended up getting back into Santa Monica around 2am. Surprisingly, no CHP was on the streets of PCH. They must have been elsewhere in the other cities, instead of out in the boonies of Malibu.