by Chris Considine
Special to Altadenablog
Christmas came early to Altadena on Saturday. A full crew of special effects specialists, film crew, and set dressers descended on Boston Street late Friday night and continued their magic transformation of two homes across from each other all day and night on Saturday.
A seasonal Christmas ad campaign was being shot for Target, complete with a blizzard and a full entourage of reindeer to bring the illusion to life. Starting early, they laid down white blankets onto the lawns and hedges, and sprayed down the roofs with white. It is a cellulous manmade snow, basically a shredded paper that is biodegradable.
Then the snow was blown onto all the trees and shrubs, with a deeper coat put onto the lawns. Snow Business had a busy day creating a full blizzard condition for the ads. The first house had actors playing a father and son playing football in the snow for most of the afternoon. Meanwhile the second house had a full decoration effort going to recreate Christmas Eve for the cameras.
The reindeer wrangler brought in some big animals with full sets of antlers to the front yard of the second house for a very late night shoot. Penned inside the west side of the yard, the reindeer were very skittish during the preparations and shooting. During the first take, one of the animals got his antler hooked up with some of the Christmas lights on the staged bushes leading to a few moments of panic for the animal and the bringing down of some of the plants. All things calmed down and the shooting continued late into the night.
