The Avengers was a very different kind of job for me, as I worked exclusively on the model unit, alongside José Granell and Ian Biggs at Pinewood.

It was the first time I had really worked with high-end scaled miniatures, and it became a massive learning curve. Hose &Ian were both real miniature maestros, and working with them taught me an enormous amount about how differently effects have to be approached when everything is being shot at scale.

We worked on a range of miniature builds, atmospheric effects, weather rigs and explosive model sequences, including the weather-control material and some of the larger destruction shots — notably the miniature work used for blowing up Big Ben.

What fascinated me was how technical the whole process was. It wasn’t simply a case of making a smaller version of a full-size effect. Everything changed — the timing, the movement, the scale of the debris, the atmospherics, even the choice of lenses and the way the cameras were set up. I learnt a huge amount about how lens choice and camera speed could completely sell or destroy the illusion of scale.

We produced some really strong work on that unit, and a lot of it made it into the finished film. For me, it opened up an entirely new side of Special Effects and gave me a much better understanding of how practical miniature work could create images that would have been almost impossible to achieve full-size.

A technically ambitious job, a lot of fun to work on, and one of those productions where I came away knowing considerably more than when I started.