When I was ten, I played the young Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins. Casting agents came to my school during lunchtime one day and within three auditions I’d got the part. The final audition was with the director Christopher Nolan, and I remember being struck by the gentleness of his demeanour. It was the same throughout filming. He would crouch down to my level to deliver his softly spoken notes and was always receptive to anything I had to say in return. He was very different from the gregarious and voluble Michael Caine, but they were both equally welcoming to me in their own way.

I had done a film before, but the budget of Batman Begins - or The Intimidation Game as it was known during production - was on another level entirely. The scale of some of the sets was mindboggling.

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A large section of Gotham City – street after street of dystopian urban decay – was built from scratch inside an enormous airship hangar. Many of these meticulously detailed streets were never even used for filming. The design team constructed an entire neighbourhood and then Christopher Nolan selected which parts he wanted to use. Walking through the fabricated metropolis was an unsettling experience, not to mention disorientating. A guide was required if you ever wanted to make it from the entrance to the site of that day’s filming.

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It was here that I had my only encounter with Christian Bale – I was lucky to meet him, we didn’t share any scenes. He was sat in his chair, in full Batsuit minus cowl, having a rest between takes where he was rescuing Katie Holmes from Falcone’s henchmen on the monorail stairway. Black circles were painted around his eyes to ensure no bare skin was visible through his eyeholes when masked. I can’t remember much about our conversation, except that he was very nice to me and apologised for having to look like a panda. Afterwards my mum said I looked a bit like him, but that I shouldn’t worry, I didn’t have such thin lips.

The Batcave was constructed in a very high-ceilinged studio space at Shepperton Studios in Surrey. I remember entering that set for the first time and seeing what I thought was a heavily textured rock face on the far side of the studio, then walking over and realising it was actually covered in hundreds, if not thousands, of model bats – each one intricately designed. It was an extraordinary level of detail considering they were only ever hinted at in the background of shots under extremely low light.

A scene from Batman Begins

And then, of course, there were the Batmobiles, which were not just functional, but bordering on the over-functional – one had apparently almost taken off when they had driven it at top speed down one of the airfield runways.

Everything about the production was scrupulous, authentic and highly immersive. The quality of the sets and props entirely transported you into Nolan’s Gotham. You didn’t have to see the film to understand what he was trying to do; the dark, gritty, muscular tone was evident from the outset and permeated all aspects of the cinematic process.

To play Batman Arkham VR, a new virtual reality game on the PlayStation 4, was a strange experience for me. In a sense, it did feel like I had stepped back onto the set. The locations and tone were fairly similar; the 360-degree vision and 3D sound, along with the ability to reach out and interact with any surrounding objects, meant I felt genuinely present in the virtual world; and the attention to detail, from the various nooks and crannies of the Batcave to a half-eaten apple discarded on an alley windowsill, gave everything an extra level of reality – one that had very much been present on the actual sets.

A scene from Batman: Arkham VR, with you playing young Bruce Wayne

The game starts off with the young Bruce witnessing his parents’ murder – a scene I know only too well. It was a bizarre feeling reliving it. I genuinely did feel a bit like my ten-year-old self again, watching the action unfold from waist height – I had what I’d describe as a flashback of a flashback (triggered by a flashback). Well, I did until the thug went off-script, leaned in close to my face and warned me: “That’s what happens when you try to be a hero.” It was the kind of thing that would have been cartoonish in film, but terrifying in VR.

After that, the real fun begins. You get to put on the Batsuit, look at yourself in the mirror as Batman, familiarise yourself with your utility belt, solve some murders and rescue Robin from the Joker. The game has some obvious limitations – it’s relatively short, your only gameplay options are a grappling hook, scanner and Batarang, and you transport between selected points rather than walk – but I have never played a game as immersive or terrifying. It’s also very satisfying on a basic level: I spent a good deal of time throwing the Batarang around, unclipping things from my utility belt and then re-clipping them, and attempting to juggle various objects I picked up from the surrounding area. The kind of things you would do if you found yourself in that situation in reality, except for maybe the juggling. For just over an hour it is highly plausible that you are actually the Dark Knight. Or, at least on the set of Batman Begins. Trust me, I know.