Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall.

For more than 25 years, producing partners Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (who are also married) have made some of the most successful and innovative VFX (and animated) films of all time, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park and this year's Oscar winner, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Along the way, they've also worked with some of the most visionary directors, including Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, M. Night Shyamalan and David Fincher. On the eve of last Saturday's VES Awards, I spoke to Kennedy and Marshall separately about their historic and influential careers.

Bill Desowitz: Let's begin with Benjamin Button: How did this finally come together?

Kathleen Kennedy: It was a question of really doing the movie the way we wanted to and technology catching up to us.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) was the duo's first major project together with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, starting careers that have endured almost three decades. ™ & © Lucasfilm. All rights reserved.

Frank Marshall: It's been a fascinating process because even way back then there wasn't even the thought of doing it with one person. We were thinking about the script in a way that it could be done with four or five actors. And how would you blend those? That was the challenge then. And different directors had different ideas of how you could do it and how long one actor could remain in the role. And then it all evolved as we got into the CG era with Jurassic Park and then onward. We just continued to ask the question when we were at ILM: Is it ready for humans?

BD: And what was your reaction to seeing that first test in 2004 that helped it get greenlit?

KK: Well, you know, in a funny way, it wasn't like seeing the first test for Jurassic where we knew we could create dinosaurs. This was really much more of an evolved process because there are so many layers in creating the technology for Benjamin. It took a much longer period of time before we saw anything.

BD: And your reaction to the way it's turned out?

VFX Legend Dennis Muren, a previous VES Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, at work on E.T. Courtesy of ILM.

KK: Well, I think it's pretty thrilling. We all knew this had to be seamless because it wasn't as though we were creating a special effect for a special effects movie. We were creating a special effect where the hope was the audience would soon forget that they were looking at a special effect, and we knew it was important that the work be in service to the storytelling and not just something that was going to cause people to be in awe or surprised. They needed to be emotionally engaged.

FM: And the subtlety of acting and obviously the facial expressions and eyes all that didn't really get there until the last four or five years. And that's what I think David saw and got very excited about because he lives in that world... and thought that if you could put a couple of programs together, you might be able to achieve that. So that's when we really got excited. That was the ultimate goal -- we just never thought it could be done. And where the genius of David came in was figuring out the storytelling aspect of the tool and how to tell the story so it didn't feel like there was an effect there.