First Knight was a sweeping Arthurian epic starring Sean Connery and Richard Gere, and my first opportunity to work with Sean. He was one of those people who simply had an aura around him that’s difficult to describe — when he walked onto a set, you knew he was there.

The production took us across Wales and numerous locations around England, working on some enormous medieval sets and large-scale action sequences.

For the Special Effects department there was plenty to get involved with: castle interiors, practical fire effects, mechanical rigs and siege equipment, all helping to give Camelot and the surrounding battles a real physical scale. These were the days when so much of what appeared on screen still had to happen practically in front of the camera.

It was another important job for me early in my career — bigger sets, bigger effects and another step into the world of large-scale feature filmmaking.