Visual effects are not judged by whether they are real.

They are judged by whether they belong. That distinction matters more than most people realize. Nothing in a film is real. Actors perform. Sets end at the edge of frame. Entire worlds disappear the moment the camera turns away. “Realism” is a sloppy word for what is actually happening.

What’s being evaluated is agreement. Agreement with the camera. How something looks on its own is not the same thing as how it appears being photographed. Assets can look correct, detailed, even impressive in isolation and still collapse the moment they are placed in a shot. That failure is not artistic. It’s optical.

The camera does not see objects. It records light after lenses, sensors, and exposure decisions have already distorted it. That distortion is the truth of the image. Anything captured in-camera is forced to obey it. Anything added later must impersonate it perfectly or be exposed as foreign.

This is why practical elements still carry weight in a digital pipeline. Grogu in Star Wars works because the camera was present for him. He was lit when the shot was lit. He occupied space when the lens was focused. Shadows, reflections, and timing were not simulated afterward. They were recorded. At the moment of exposure, he belonged.

Fully CG creatures don’t fail because they are digital. They fail when they negotiate with the camera instead of submitting to it. You can build them well. You can animate them well. You can render them beautifully. And they will still float if they disagree with the physics of the plate. The image always knows.

In live-action VFX, how something looks, how it moves, and how it appears to the camera are what determines its photorealism. You don’t get to prioritize them. You don’t get to fix one with another. Detail cannot solve optics. Motion cannot rescue integration. The camera is not impressed by our effort.

This is why compositing is not cleanup. It is arbitration. It is where assets are forced to obey the reality of the shot. Photorealism is not achieved by making things look real. It is achieved when the image stops questioning whether they were ever added.

Everything in filmmaking is constructed. The only part that isn’t negotiable is what the camera was forced to record. Visual effects exist in the gap between the two. Your job is not to make things real. Your job is to make the camera believe they were there.