The Jungle Book was my first major distant location shoot, and the first time I spent an entire production working abroad. We were in India for around six months, moving across multiple locations and working with a cast that included Jason Scott Lee, John Cleese, Cary Elwes, Sam Neill, Jason Flemyng and Lena Headey.

It was a very different world of filmmaking in 1994. We worked through extreme heat, dense jungle and some incredibly challenging locations, providing a full range of practical and atmospheric effects throughout the shoot.

Most of the animals were real and working on set with us — something that would be almost unimaginable on a production of this scale today. It gave the film a physicality and unpredictability that you simply don’t get in the same way from digital work.

The stages in what was then Bombay were staggering in size. Our job was to help bring those huge sets to life with atmosphere. We created a flaming trough and moving set pieces with very basic mechanisms, Paul Knowles at his best, I learned a lot from him.