Emmy award-winning visual effects supervisor Max has spent nearly 30 years honing his skills in the visual effects industry. In 2025 he delivered the visual effects for The Lost Bus, a film directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matthew McConaughey about the deadly 2018 Californian wildfires.

Max supervised Cinesite’s work on the celebrated 2024 Steve McQueen historical drama, Blitz. Recreating the bombing of the London docklands through the eyes of a small child, the work was described in the British press as “visually stunning,” “haunting and beautiful,” and by McQueen himself as, “a standout moment for the film.”

Max began his career as a commercial illustrator and digital matte painter. In early 2000, he moved to New Zealand to embark on his role as Head of Matte Painting on the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Since then, he has worked on and supervised teams for over 60 productions of all genres, both large and small, film and TV, five of which were Academy Award winners. Most notably, he was the Visual Effects Supervisor on Chernobyl, for which he was honoured with a Primetime EMMY, a VES award and a BAFTA nomination. He also received a BAFTA nomination for the visual effects work on Tarsem Singh’s Emerald City.

Over the years, Max has applied his specialist skills to create some of the most famous and much-loved cinematic moments for directors such as Peter Jackson, John Madden, Kenneth Branagh and Johan Renck. From lava-spouting Mount Doom, sci-fi planets for Star Wars and the magic ceiling of Hogwarts to recreating the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl, for Max, the key to developing these iconic scenes is to act first and foremost as a storyteller, authentically bringing the client’s vision to life.

Outside of work he is kept busy by his two children, a Maine Coon cat, several goldfish and a tank of tropical fish. A keen cyclist, he is also a dedicated spectator of the Tour de France every year.