The film began to shoot in France in March 2002. The crew built an old French-style castle there; in April of the same year, the crew moved to Montreal, Canada, where they filmed many war scenes and locations, and completed all pre-shooting until September. Director Downer hopes to shoot the film with real scenes. He believes that only shooting with realistic scenes can bring a simple and primitive medieval style to the film, so he did not hesitate to build many castles. At the same time, the producer selected Light and Magic Special Effects Company to produce the special effects in the movie
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Art director Daniel T. Dolans believes that the most challenging is the time travel platform. Since there is no physical reference, it can only be fabricated out of thin air. In order to find design inspiration, Dolans and visual consultant Tom Sanders visited many research laboratories in Northern California. Their initial result was a closed room full of lasers, which was modified by director Downer. In Donner’s idea, people who are ready to start their time journey should stand on a circular platform surrounded by many rotating mirrors. For this reason, when building the time machine set, the art department used a total of 90 standard specs of mirror panels and 20 tons of steel
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In order to build a full-scale medieval castle, Dorrance went to Britain, Germany and France to study all kinds of castles, and finally found a blueprint for the design in the Dordogne Valley in France. Before the start of construction, co-producer Kevin de la Noy invited skilled craftsmen from the UK who had filmed the movie "Brave Heart" with him, and asked them to teach their construction methods to the locals. Thirteen weeks later, the medieval castle on the Montreal set was finally completed
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