One of the trickiest aspects of Push was locking down the design of the "mover" effect. Courtesy of Peerless Camera Co. and Digiscope. All images © 2009 Summit Ent., LLC.

Not unlike TV's Heroes or last year's Jumper, Push (from Summit Ent.) involves a group of young people who were born with psychic powers. Some can see the future, others can see the history of an object and some can temporarily change the shape of things, wipe away memory or put thoughts into other people's heads. And some are able to move people and objects via telekinesis -- which leads to highly unusual confrontations.

Originally, director Paul McGuigan's intent was to use practical effects as much as possible, and minimize the use of visual effects. But as it often happens, the modest initial shot count grew to more than 400 vfx shots. Visual Effects Supervisor Kent Houston and VFX Producer Mary Stuart divided up the sequences between London-based Peerless Camera Co. and Digiscope in California. At Peerless, the project was shepherded by Digital Supervisor John Swinnerton, Digital Producer Marianne Speight, CG Supervisor Ditch Doy, 2D Supervisor John Swinnerton, and Animation Supervisors Tim Ollive and Jamie Tremelling.

The telekinetic fights presented some serious challenges, as characters had to be seen hitting walls, crashing into ceilings and falling down staircases in a most brutal manner. "We worked very closely with Second Unit Director and Stunt Supervisor Nick Powell to do as many of these effects as possible in camera," Houston explains. "We assisted where needed doing wire removal, painting out specially-prepared pieces of set, and enhancing bodily impacts where required. The stunts were very physical and extremely brutal. In some cases, the sets were built to yield slightly to prevent injury to cast or stunt crew. In post, we made everything look much more rigid by either painting out or replacing anything that appeared to give. This made the bodily impacts appear much more jarring. In general, the wire rigs were designed to be well concealed, in or above the set. We did do a lot of additional paintwork covering up the various slots, arms and wires, and favored this technique over construction of CG sections of the set. In the end, we didn't need any CG doubles for those scenes."

Digiscope tackled a majority of the telekinesis shots. Digital Supervisors Dion Hatch and Brent Prevatt oversaw the effort, along with Digital Producer Terron Pratt. "For nearly all of these shots, we simply worked the effect over the stunt action," Hatch says. "There were a few cases where we had to rotoscope the stunt performers and change either their trajectory or speed. We also added CG debris and dust on some of the shots to enhance their impact with the walls or the bamboo scaffolding."

Telekinetic fights were enhanced in post using wire removal, painting out specially-prepared pieces of set, and enhancing bodily impacts where required. 

Pure Energy
One of the trickiest aspects of the project was locking down the design of the "mover" effect. Some of the psychics have the ability to produce bursts of pure energy, a concept that proved difficult to visualize. "The script originally described the effect as 'air warps'," Houston recalls. "Paul McGuigan was very clear that he didn't want any kind of ripple effect. So, after many different tests, we managed to establish a technique that, although very brief, was extremely complex and custom-conformed for each shot."