Lord of the Rings: animation that was not there

The need to recreate reality is a driving force behind art. Mimesis-imitation of the real world as a main function of art was observed and analyzed as early as the fourth century B. C. by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Although artists searched for inner inspiration, the psychological need to record reality was always present, appearing during the renaissance, in baroque painting, the art of film, and probably reaching it's most sophisticated form in computer graphics and animation. Seventy years ago, Polish critic Karol Irzykowski, in his book "The 10th Muse", predicted that one day animated film would evolve into the most important film genre of the future. He also contemplated the possibility of animation reaching a state of realism in which it could show "ordinary things and people". He would be surprised to learn how true his words were to become. Digital media has given us an opportunity to go even further towards that goal of "registering reality". In this sketch, I present these concepts in relation to Digital Domain's work on New Line Cinema's release of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic tale "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring".