There is no host serving up helpings of shtick. The awards are largely handed out by titans of the business rather than stars. "And now a man who needs no introduction" the announcer intones. "Mr. Craig Baron." (The effects chief, I am told, of "The Ring" and "Mission Impossible 2").

At some points the presenters seem to have trouble explaining arcane categories such as "outstanding compositing" and "outstanding pre-rendered visuals." Presenter-actor Craig T. Nelson ("Mr. Incredible") gets huge laughs with his deadpan reading of the technical specs on a category.

The speeches are endearingly unrehearsed, stumbling and liberally dotted with geek jargon. The speeches do add up though, and when you are rewarding every branch of your trade, well, that can be a lot of branches. "The first five hours of this show just fly by," Cheech Marin jokes when he presents.

Still, after a season of canned, over-rehearsed, would-be spectacles, the site of a show about and for its members is a gust of fair winds.

The invisible men A recurring theme throughout the night is that if effects artists do their jobs right, no one should notice it's an effect. In the lobby, I chat with Van Ling, an effects supervisor for DVDs, who points proudly to the work of effects artists who created Ziyi Zhang's blue eyes in "Memoirs of a Geisha and Ralph Fiennes' reptilian nose in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (both of which were nominated for VES awards).

Throughout the night, references to making effects so seamless the audience doesn't notice draw loud applause. This is quite a contrast to the other awards I've attended this year, where the ceremonies often feel like sour-grape gatherings as members try to make ungrateful audiences and executives see how important we (pick one: producers, writers, etc.) really are.

This show upholds an air of celebration of the craft. Some credit for this must go to the clip reels. Face it, footage of King Kong fighting dinosaurs makes for much more exhilarating viewing than, say, soliloquies on racial relations from "Crash."

The god I have witnessed it seems hundreds of tribute speeches in honorary awards. I've seen Norman Lear, Anthony Hopkins and Grant Heslov lauded as living saints. But nothing can approach the riot of garlands laid at the feet of the VES honorary honoree, Pixar chief and incoming Disney Animation czar John Lasseter.

In speech after speech, filmed tribute after filmed tribute (including one from Yoda who burbles, "Apologies I send that present at your award I could not be.") the boyish wizard behind "Toy Story," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" is credited with nothing less than creating modern animation by unleashing the power of computer animation.

In his speech, Lasseter tells of his eureka moment when, as a young, frustrated Disney animator, he was present at the first viewing of the light-cycle sequence in "Tron" and realized, "This is what Walt was waiting for."

His biggest applause, however, comes when he reminds the crowd that effects alone are not what make a film special: "What interests people is not the fact that it was made with computers. It is the energy and the characters that captures an audience."

I leave thinking it is a rarely confident group of Hollywood workers indeed who can applaud the notion that the product is bigger than themselves.