The
roof door is open. Time for some spy action. All this 007 game creation
has me needing a good rooftop scene.
This is a view of the southwest corner. We're looking at the marshlands and mesa-like area of Playa del Rey (which we're also in in this photo).
Turning
to the right, a view back toward Marina del Rey and Culver City. This
is the northwest corner of the building.
Looking
from the northwest corner toward the northeast corner. This is all part
of the elaborate city of apartments that stretches for miles, all known
as Playa Vista. These are beautiful, surgically clean villas and condos
for way more than I'd want to pay per month. I believe the EA buildings
were and maybe still are part of Playa Vista, whose offices are the fancy
building in the bottom left of the photo.
Moving
down a bit toward the northeast corner, this is the park in front of the
Playa Vista offices (out of frame to the left now). There's a curved,
ivy-covered trellis walkway wrapping halfway around a large fountain,
and usually a lot of people walking their dogs.
A
view from the northeast corner toward the southeast. Off in the distance
on the hills is the vast spread of buildings making up Loyola Marymount
University. The street the tall white apartment buildings border is Jefferson,
which is chock full of movie studios and studio rental facilities starting
about a mile into the distance. Below is unfinished landscaping, which
is supposedly going to be a soccer field for EA employees, and maybe some
other sports fields/courts.
EA
owns that all-glass 2-story building, too. I've asked around, and nobody
knows why. We all have a hunch it's going to be corporate offices, or
home to the coolest laser tag arena ever built. We're all hoping for the
second possibility, of course.
Time
to check out the interior of that giant infrastructure I came out of.
It sits in the middle of the roof with a huge border on all sides. The
old EA used to have karate lessons by a local master on the roof. I wanna
see if we can get that going here. Bring on the agents!
I'm
inside the structure. It appears to be made entirely of ductwork.
GIANT
ductwork. That bend in the background is about 8' tall. And loud!
Mazes
of pipes with obvious warning colors and markings, ductwork shaking from
the giant turbines and engines running the environmental systems, and
from the high winds up on the roof... It's also freezing.
Straight
out of Doctor Seuss (the good kind, sans Mike Myers)
Whoa,
these pipes are clean!
Two
of the powerful engines running the ductwork. This section was shaking
so much, I had to brace the camera against the ductwork, so it would shake
in time with it, thus steadying the shot.
This
changes my mind about all FPS games. There really IS a giant red switch
in the heart of the ductwork maze! I can hardly believe it. It was even
marked ON and OFF (it was ON). I desperately wanted to pull it and see
what happened, but it said I needed to activate the fuel pumps first!
Plus, I'm low on health and ammo. I'll come back to it.
I
had to crawl under this duct to get into the switch area. Just like a
game!
It's
like rooms created out of ductwork, with no obvious way in or out without
crawling, or climbing. I still don't know why I'm in here.
Yeah
yeah, more ducts...
Stairs
to the 4th floor, figured I'd try the elevator for the full spy experience.
That door opened on me unexpectedly. I'm glad no one was there to see
me pressed into the corner with the camera.
Back
in my cubicle, pretending I have no idea what you're talking about, that
I was up on the roof. That's ridiculous.