NO WORRIES, NOTHING HAPPENS!
I bought my wife one of those stylish new iMacs for Christmas. You know the type, just a big flat screen on a pedestal. I bought myself a present, too - an Airport Extreme. That means she's no longer on my Mac when I'm trying to work, and because we are now wirelessly networked she can use hers anywhere in the house.
Her new Mac is always on and playing something. If it's music, she has animated screen displays. So I gave her another present, the CalMarine DVD.
This DVD consists of soothing underwater images with the sort of soundtrack you would expect in a dentist's reception while waiting for root canal treatment.
You know how you get tormented during the evening while on diving liveaboards, as you sit through the proudly displayed video footage of fellow-passengers? They have usually shot endless material in which nothing much happens, but the camera never stops tracking and panning, and every shot is held onto for several minutes longer than the five seconds it merits.
Well, the makers of this DVD has seamlessly cut together 90 minutes of that. It just rumbles on rather like an aquarium, only instead of the noise of the bubble-maker, it has elevator music.
The producers don't expect you to sit down and watch it from beginning to end. No, rather like an aquarium, you just glance at it from time to time. Perfect for the dentist's reception. There's no script, no form, no beginning or end. It turns the iMac into an electronic aquarium.
With footage shot in the Maldives, the Galapagos, Cocos, the Red Sea, the Caribbean and around the Great Barrier Reef, you're bound to find some of it very familiar. It's a pity that the content was sourced from low-resolution amateur video cameras. It's sharpness and colour certainly doesn't match up to what Hollywood can produce.
However, I ran it in the kitchen one evening and I noticed our goldfish starting to look anxious. Well, you all know about the accelerating cost of fish-food these days.
Brian Leeson, who came up with A Serene Marine Journey, says that it was in fact originally conceived for the dental trade, and that it was 'the first digital DVD', produced in 1997. He also pledges that a minimum of 50% of the cover price of £14.99 on every copy now sold to the public will be sent to the main DEC Tsunami Earthquake appeal fund.
John Bantin