Benjamin Button TED talk

The Science of Benjamin Button
The film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button features a lot of special effects to create a very genuine idea of who this person is. Their purpose was that they obviously didn't want this person took look so fake so they put in a lot of effort into making sure this character looked truly old; they spent a lot of time in the lighting and the face, making the cheeks and muscles move like they should in real life.
Their hypothesis for this was probably: "If the put in a lot of effort (time, money) into making this look real then will it look truly genuine to everyone?". They managed to put a lot of facial markers into a form or make-up so that the computers and cameras would be able to detect the facial expression of the actor.

It's pretty obvious that their procedure took a long time; 2 years, did they say? All this just for that one hour of the movie that the actor had to look 40 years older. First they had to do a lot of research and find ways to create the face. Then they had to get the equipment and do many tests. After bringing in the actor, they still had to do all the scenes and put it together with the special effects. With all the faces done, they had to settle the lighting so that the face looked like it was still in the scene. When they were all done they had to work with the people for the movie and put it all together so it would be the great film.

Their analysis for was probably to go through the whole movie and to check whether it looks real by showing it to people who haven't seen it before and know what they were doing. Once the testing audience approves that it looks real, then can they show it to the public.