Tonight Teresa and I gathered with NFP friends and made space ships out of common items such as cardboard, plastic cups, tape, and silver spray paint. We then filled the space ships with various assortments of fireworks and observed how to make cool explosions for future space movies. In my opinion, the “flower” fire crackers yielded the most cinematic damage, especially when supplemented with sprinkles of corn starch. I was skeptical at first, but I learned for myself the value of practical explosives. There’s so much random carnage in nature that CGI just hasn’t mastered yet. True you can get some spectacular glitz with CGI, but sometimes the magic is in the less than spectacular crumples and flaking, and irregular distortions.