We were both Indiana Jones fans but up until this point I had never come across filmmaking in any capacity – I had acted in a few school plays before but my closest connection to movie making was the name of my hometown in Northern Ireland, Holywood (pronounced as Hollywood).

It was a hazy day in Vista, in Southern California and me, Dan and his friend from Ohio JOSH EDWARDS were trying to decide what to do. Me and Josh had a day to kill before we returned to respective homes and we all wanted to do something fun on our last day there. So the idea of making a little movie came up – Dan was an aspiring filmmaker after all and it all sounded like fun to me. I think my only input at this point was

“How about we make it an Indiana Jones film?” I already had the hat and jacket anyway.

Dan wanted to direct but both Josh and myself were vying for the main role – the only fair way to settle things seemed to be a coin toss. Fate had a plan for me that day for I won the coin toss – an event which I has brought me much pleasure and also much suffering.

So with Dan directing, Josh controlling camera and me as famed archaeologist Indiana Jones, we trooped out to a barren patch of wasteland behinds Dan’s house just off the freeway. The script was still hot from the printer, only minutes old, written in only a few short hours. So armed with only a video camera and a dream, we began filming on our ‘masterpiece’.

It was a very physical experience, for me at least – there was a lot of running and falling and jumping and more running and more falling… and I loved it! I had never experienced anything so exciting as this before – up until this point acting to me had been something you did in the very enclosed space of a stage and in a very rehearsed and staged manner. But this was much more real and dynamic.

Its ironic looking back now that how things began was actually to foreshadow how things would be years later. Even back then, without our limited vision of the scale of the film, we faced severe restrictions and cast and crew had to double up. So not only was Dan directing my screen debut, but he was also chasing me as the antagonist in the action scenes, and then seconds later conversing with me as an ally in the dialogue scenes, dressed only in a bed sheet for a costume (apparently authentic Shaman attire).

Filming culminated in our stunt sequence where I had to jump off this dirt bank and roll down into the dust below. Despite a few scrapes and scuffs (a sign of things to come) it all seemed to go well until we reviewed the footage later that evening and found that I had actually misjudged the frame and jumped out of shot.

So that was the extent of our first session of filming in California – it goes without saying none of this made it into the final edit of Templars (we didn’t even have the name of the film at this stage) but a dream had been born – a dream that would endure for over 3 years and span the globe, crossing continents and uniting people from the USA, the UK and Europe. Many problems would be encountered, many sacrifices suffered, but also lifelong friendships forged and unforgettable memories made.