War Story

War Story Interview

Glen Ishikawa - Production Manager - Hawaii

Can you tell me a war story, or a story of when something went badly wrong, or seemed like it was going to fall apart, but then ended up working out [or didn’t work out].

Oh yes. I was helping to Produce a pilot for a new television show. The show involved a lot of breaking through things as a main chunk of the special effects. We used primarily glass although we did use some explosions. So towards the end of the shooting week we had 1 more day left to shoot and there was a scene where the main character jumped through glass. We set up the scene but we couldn't find the glass. It was no where on set. So I had to drive all around for a few hours trying to find some glass that was safe for us to use. I literally went everywhere and nobody had any. So I started to give up when I get call from another producer on the show and it turns out our Special FX coordinator had the glass in a moving truck so it wouldn't break. We had lost 3 hours of film time but finally managed to get the scene shot. It was a rough day.

Do you have any advice for a person starting out in the business, or someone who is about to graduate?

Work extremely hard. Nothing in this business is going to get handed to you, unless you know a lot of people. So keep working hard, keep meeting people and make connections.


Thanks for taking time to answer my questions.

You're Welcome.