If you see a supremely believable sequence of the earth being destroyed in a movie, you can be pretty certain it's not real because a) you paid ten bucks plus the price of popcorn, and b) you're still here.

But what about images that are shown in other venues, as parts of documentaries or other TV shows meant to insinuate or mimic reality? That scene where the lion tackled the wildebeest right in front of the camera--how the heck did the lion just not eat the camera person? It's an easier meal, and would require far less chasing and clawing and gnawing. Could it be that that very sequence was manufactured?

Computer Generated Imagery, or CGI, is a mystical blend of art and science that has advanced to the stage that convincingly real vignettes can be created, sometimes to avoid the eating of staff by wildlife, or simply to save time and money. But when are these faux real things that exist before our eyes too real? Does an audience have the right to know that what they are seeing, if presented as reality, is, in fact, not?

David Attenborough has some thoughts on this in a brief article in the Daily Mail, but what do you think? Is there a point where not real needs to be explicitly labeled as such?