The phenomenon that is Stephen Hawking died last night. His legacy was to bring science to the masses.

22 years ago I was lucky enough to be involved in turning Stephen Hawking's book "A Brief History of Time" into documentary series for the BBC. It was an enormous project taking two years to make. We filmed and interviewed ground breaking scientists and astrophysicists all over the world. We looked through telescopes at the night sky and visited the European Space Agency. It was a "one in a million" series to work on. It was also my first chance to write the scripts for two of the programmes - an incredibly daunting task as I am not an astrophysicist! - but it was really the start of my documentary directing career.

The whole series was narrated by Stephen himself and we went to Cambridge to film him presenting the series. It was incredible to meet him.

Stephen Hawking in Cambridge on the shoot — Stephen Hawking on the shoot

Stephen Hawking on the set — Stephen Hawking in Cambridge presenting the series

Through the telescope - Orion Belt, Orion Nebula and Horsehead Nebula — Through the lens of the telescope - The Orion Belt, Orion Nebula and Horsehead Nebula

One lovely project I worked on involved turning an empty warehouse into a busy looking animation studio full of light and colour. We were creating three 90 second films for Channel Four to promote the upcoming film of "We're Going on a Bear Hunt". We couldn't film in the real studio at Lupus Films as they were up against deadlines to finish the actual film in time for Christmas. We would have been in the way. So with a trusty team of helpers from Lupus we turned this warehouse into an animation studio. Full of colour, drawings, paintings, crayons, jars of coloured water and gouache paints we re-dressed the set three times to change the atmosphere for each film.

The first was called "snow" and we lit it with cool light and had a more muted background. For "cave" it was a darker atmosphere we were after and much more moody. Finally for "grass" we filled it with warm light changing the background pictures on the wall for ones full of colour.

We had a fantastic team led by gaffer, Gary Owen, on the electrical side and Adam Jackson Nocker on the production side. Everyone pulled together helping to get the whole thing done in two days. A big achievement. Ashley Palin was the director of photography and he brilliantly brought my ideas and thoughts to life. But the biggest thanks go to Martin Oliver who patiently waited and painted to my demands.