At the center of The Mothman Prophecies are a series of otherworldly visions and premonitions that foretell tragedy. The filmmakers chose Cinesite Hollywood to help design and create these effects, which had to blend with cinematographer Fred Murphy's visuals. Visual Effects Supervisor Laurel Klick oversaw Cinesite's contribution.

Klick's role included creating manifestations of the Mothman and other abstract, paranormal effects. It also featured several hyper-realistic shots, including a bridge, a river and a chemical plant that are convincingly rendered despite being built completely in the digital realm.

Klick won an Emmy award last year for her work on Frank Herbert's Dune (Part 1), the mini-series that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel. "There are not a lot of women in visual effects, so hopefully this recognition will encourage others to pursue a career that's technical, but equally creative, in nature," she says.

Prior to joining Cinesite in 2000, Klick was a visual effects supervisor at Netter Digital Entertainment, where she worked on Dune. She began her career by cleaning film on Stars Wars at ILM and moved on to the optical and digital departments at R. Greenberg & Assoc., Manhattan Transfer, ILM, and Available Light Ltd. Her credits include Terminator, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Last Action Hero, Braveheart, Dead Presidents, Mortal Kombat, and My Favorite Martian.

Klick is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Visual Effects Society, and the International Cinematographers Guild. She received an Emmy certificate in 1983 for Outstanding Individual Achievement in visual effects for The Winds of War (optical camera).

Klick says that the main challenges in The Mothman Prophecies were designing and executing believable representations of abstract ideas that are crucial to the story. These included brief glimpses of the shadowy Mothman, which are integrated into Murphy's live-action footage.

"The effects are very quick," says Klick. "In one shot a reflection floats across a mirror. You almost can't make it out. You know there is an eye there, a face, and something soft and blurry. The mirror shot used a combination of flat artwork and a live-action plate. Usually these effects are on the edge of being abstract."

At the climax of the story is the bridge collapse. Klick says that two of the bridge shots were created in the computer graphics realm, including the river underneath and a chemical plant in the background. Other shots in the climactic bridge sequence blended live-action with miniatures and CG techniques.

"We built our CG version of the bridge one piece at a time in Maya," says Klick. "We had plans of the real bridge north of Pittsburgh, where the principal photography was done. There were drawings from the art department for us to base our bridge on and also the miniature bridge, built by Fantasy 2."

Klick says that a big CG pullback shot reveals how the bridge is woven into the fabric of the story. "This is when the audience realizes something is going to happen to the bridge, and not the chemical plant," she says. "It's always very important for our effects shots to work within the reality of the film and that especially applies to this sequence. The chemical plant, the shore, the sky, the river, the water, the light from the water, cars on the bridge and lights on the bridge - everything is computer graphics. There is an incredible amount of detail that you really don't consciously think about. It had to be super-realistic."

Cinesite used proprietary software to create and control the water under the bridges in those night shots. "That could have been a very difficult section of the shot, but we have an edge when it comes to CG water," says Klick. "We can control every aspect, including the angle of the light causing reflections and the height and frequency of waves, using our in-house code."

Klick credits director Mark Pellington with striking the right balance. "The effects were all used to tell the story," she says. "If an effect didn't tell the story, he either changed it or got rid of it. When everything is completely story-driven like that, a movie can become more than the sum of its parts. It's really satisfying to take part in that kind of project."