"Button" Buttons Up The Oscar

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton and Craig Barron

Hearty congratulations go out to the visual effects teams behind "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects at the 81st Academy Awards. Here's Eric Barba's acceptance speech:

Oh my God. On behalf of myself, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton and Craig Barron, I'd like to thank the Academy for this incredible honor. I'd also like to thank Edson Williams and his team at Lola Visual Effects and Nathan McGuinness and his team at Asylum as well as all the other visual effects teams that worked so hard on this film. I'd like to thank our amazing team at Digital Domain, my mentor Ed Ulbrich, my wonderful producer Lisa Beroud, the woman who is my biggest supporter, my wife Roma, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Ceán Chaffin, for trusting that we could actually pull this off. Brad Pitt for an amazing performance. And of course David Fincher for giving us all the opportunity to work on this film. To my kids, Cole and Nicolette, I'd just like to say, "Work hard, do good work and never give up." Thank you.

This was a rare year in which all three nominees were worthy of Oscar, in my opinion. And it was extra special to see my friend Craig Barron holding that statuette on the stage of the Kodak Theater. Way to go, Craig!

I even updated the Academy Awards section of Visual Effects Headquarters. How about that?

Update: Here is the backstage Thank-You cam, where Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton and Craig Barron were allowed to make their thank-you's.

...and there are the four winners, answering questions from the press backstage.