I’m all for photorealism. My attitude is that, if you’re going to do CGI, and since it can be done now, photorealism is the way to go. I think it’s an exciting new artform, seeing just how close to real you can make something look. Can you fool an unwitting observer into believing that he’s just looking at a photograph of something shot in the real world. I’ve seen it happen. I show my roomate all the time photorealistic Cycles renders. I still enjoy the few seconds of stammer he does when he remarks that he’d like a bedroom like that, and I tell him it was a model built in a computer by one of my BA colleagues.
Besides: I’m interested in making sci-fi movies. Sci-fi has always been about telling interesting stories about what can be done with innovative new technology. I can’t imagine anything more apt than an artist using innovative new technology in innovative ways to tell a technology story.
However, I don’t think “Sintel” fits into that realm.
I loved “Sintel.” I was an English major in school, and I’ve always felt that story is the most important element of any creative endevour. By far.
Sintel had a fantastic story. Many people on YouTube commented that it moved them to tears. That’s a hell of a commendation for a cartoon. And it is the mark of a very successful story. The first commandment of storytelling is to make the audience feel something.
I think it’s also why “Sintel” is non-photorealistic.
I don’t think “Sintel” is supposed to look like a videogame.
What I see “Sintel” as, instead, is mythology and drama. In the ancient, pure sense.
People like Aristotle said that the point of Drama (I mean the ancient greek plays, not drive-by shootings, the dalliances of morons on “reality tv,” or shouting matches at the nightly rastlin’ show…) is to provoke a catharsis in the audience. To make the audience feel somehow that they can relate to the human faillings of the character. And to teach them a moral lesson.
“Sintel” does that, and on a very personal level.
I place “Sintel” not on par with a video game or “reality” (whatever that’s supposed to be.)
Instead, I would place it squarely in the Classics section. Next to “The Illiad,” “The Oddyssy,” “Gone With The Wind,” “Star Wars,” “Beowulf.” Etc.
This film is not supposed to be reality. Instead it is Heightened Reality. A dreamland in which reality is crystallized, and takes on a deeper meaning and greater import than the meaninglessness of day-to-day. Like the moment you have when you suddenly realize a deep and chilling truth about your life. Something that you know you will never forget, something that you know will change you forever.
If you want a film to watch that might compare, you might try “Excalibur,” the old film made in the late 70’s or early '80’s.
“Sintel” looks like art from a Heroic Age culture, more interested in depicting their heroes as near-gods, and their villains as monsters. Reality can’t compare to that, and is a let-down.
Sintel is visual poetry.
