I was walking out to the second floor terrace of my office building to smoke a cigarette when I first witnessed the object. It was to the east, beyond the trees in the office park next to my building. It looked as if it was at some distance. The object resembled a ball or star, white, almost glowing. It was in moving in an erratic pattern, like it was floating in tornado, around and around in the same place. It began to move to my right, and as it passed behind a tree I moved to bring it back into view. When I sighted it again, it began to eject smaller bright white objects. The smaller objects looked as if they were being dropped, like old footage of World War 2 bombers dropping bombs on Japan. As they fell, they soon disappeared, as if they were evaporated or even translated. The large object dropped three objects with in the span of about 15 or 20 seconds. The original object then began to ascend up, like a balloon, as if it had gotten lighter. Then it stopped its ascent, and waved as if it was a balloon on a tether swaying in the wind. Then it descended a bit and hovered. I continued to look at it while it was hovering, completely still; no more erratic movements. I looked down to the floor for only about a second or two to stomp out my cigarette and when I looked back up the object was gone.This all happened looking east from a second story balcony near junction of the 90 and the 405 in the Fox Hills neighborhood of Culver City, CA, which only a couple miles north of LAX. My coworkers and I frequently see planes landing at LAX, and can hear the distant roar of the jet engines. Police helicopters frequently fly over as well. This was not a helicopter or an aircraft I know of, and I've seen almost all of them. This incident took about 5 minutes or so, basically the amount of time it takes me to smoke a cigarette.