"Really, my only concern is that the actual shortfalls of cg will in an of itself break the suspension of disbelief." I see what you're saying here, but I think you're looking at it far too intensely. While I do believe it's true that if one is rendering a sequence in a very realistic style (photorealism), then the animation should hold up to that realism as well. This isn't entirely about "suspending disbelief", it's more to do with CONSISTANCY, and flow. If the animation is done in an exaggerated, cartoony way, but the visuals are done in a photorealistic style, then most audiences will get confused, and it WOULD potentially become very distracting (then again, it's never really been done before, so who knows?) ;-) What I'm trying to say to you is this: Don't fear that if you render in a realistic style, to compliment your particular story's genre, that you will lose the audience's respect or interest if it's not absolutely believable in every single frame!! That's nonesense. If they are interested in the story, and the animation is good, and the dialogue is believable, then they will continue to follow it, and not be distracted. As long as your target audience isn't a bunch of animation geeks like some of us here (me included), then they won't be overly critical of the visuals, so long as the rest of it holds up. Trust me on that. What matters most is continuity and substance.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.