Practical footage is photography of physical subjects and events. A finished shot can use that footage while also containing digital removal, replacement or additions.
Photography and the delivered image
Recording an action solves one production problem: obtaining the photographed performance or event. It does not automatically solve continuity, unwanted reflections, visible assistance or the requirements of the fictional setting.
In Top Gun: Maverick, some sailing shots required removal of visible assistance personnel. The sailing photography remained part of the image even though the delivered shot changed who could be seen in it.
John Wick: Chapter 4 similarly removed tracks and machinery traces from desert imagery. The existence of digital sand work does not imply that the entire desert scene was generated. It identifies a change to particular portions of the photographed setting.
Additions and substitutions
Some effects add elements that were not photographed in the required form. Others replace elements that were present but unsuitable for the final image. Both operations can occur around a physical performance.
Take a constructed shot of an actor crossing a real courtyard with a modern sign in the background. Removing the sign changes the depicted period without replacing the actor’s movement. Calling the shot wholly untouched or wholly synthetic would misdescribe the same combination in opposite ways.
The correct unit of description
A production claim needs a subject smaller than the entire film whenever methods differ across elements. A photographed vehicle, a digital reflection and a replaced background can coexist in one shot.
The question is therefore which elements were captured and which were changed. A label such as “practical” can accurately identify the photographed contribution while remaining incomplete as an account of the final image. Neither physical photography nor digital alteration erases the work contributed by the other.