Merging the real with animation...!

If you have watched movies like 'Neverending Story', 'Lord of the Rings', 'Enchanted' and many more others including 'The Transformers' you would notice the incredible merge of two completely different trends creating fascinating filmmaking as allowed by the new media. The time when the assumption was that animation alone can create magic and manifest it in its visual world has passed, as now that same magic can exist in real world film. Take 'Enchanted' for example, a classic Disney animation story brought to life in a real world with real characters where the characters find magic in a world that is not fairytale land. From this I choose to understand that with advancing computer software, the change from traditional to more experimental digital filmmaking is pre-eminent. Why not take the risk of reaching great heights with the tool of new media, reaching two audiences at once, keeping both traditions alive within the other, upgraded to computer-generated filmmaking and animation? But then again, is it still just animation, and/or is it still just real world film? 'Beowulf' deepens the debate yet leaves this question unanswered. This film takes you into a world where you're uncertain of whether the characters will become fully human or remain animated or not, you keep guessing while enjoying the thrilling action of this wonderful experience of digitization.

With this in mind is there still room for hand-drawn animation in cinema today? None that I can justify, because the generation of today is fully saturated with computer animation that no other kind before this can be as amazing as pencil animation was to the former generation, who themselves have yielded their love for the old with a yearning of the new.

Why is that may be your question? Well my answer is that the world itself functions with computers thus cinema audiences are only impressed to see fresh ways of making films because this challenges them into a fresh way of watching their films. And with this new way they can watch and enjoy both interests in cinema with one film with an even greater challenge of not appreciating one above the other. "The Golden Compass' is another of these mergers and successfully so, as it took the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. The animals became more than animated but were real, completely crossing the thin line that existed from traditional animation to something even beyond real only possible with computer production. How far beyond have computers changed the world of animation in this merger? As far as it being the underlying concept of any magic that exists in the real world.