175 of 180 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
not what I was hoping for, but very good photography, December 1, 2000
This review is from: Coral Sea Dreaming (DVD)
Coral Sea Dreaming consists of the main feature, "Coral Sea Dreaming" (54 minutes), and six short features Wetlands", "Surfin' Dolphins" (3 min), "Ocean Moods" (6 min), "Undersea Breeze" (4 mins), "Sea Lions" (7 min), and "Save the Reef" (1 min).
My personal favorite was the Surfin' Dolphins short feature which had nice shots of dolphins playing in the surf off an Australian beach set to lively music.
The cinematography in all the features is excellent and captions (when turned on) clear and easy to read.
But... What I was hoping for in the main feature was a more relaxing, less rushed, somewhat aquarium-like, view of underwater coral and fish of the reef -- what I got was more of a very well done streaming catalog of short clips of each fish or coral.
Rather than a more continuous flow of images, the main feature presented a view of one scene or fish species for 3 to 7 seconds before cutting to another fish or angle for another 3 to 7 seconds, over and over again.
This gave me the feeling that I was reviewing a substantial catalog of excellent views of coral and individual fish species rather than the more relaxing views that I had desired.
I was hoping for something that would bring back memorys of past snorkeling trips (Sea of Cortez) -- holding a view of a continuous and/or contiguous background longer or following a school of fish longer. But, too many scene changes too fast...
So, partly based on my expectations (perhaps unwarranted), I have to give this DVD 3 stars. I would happily give any of the 3-7 second scenes 5 stars, but I found the constant cutting and fading of scene after scene in such rapid order disruptive -- enough so that I did not find the feature relaxing, nor particularly suited for repeated foreground or background viewing.
I'm guessing that this would be a wonderful video for anyone planning to go the the Great Barrier Reef who wants to view and study a large collection of short segments of different creatures of the reef.
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47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Digital sounds and images at their best...educational too, November 4, 1999
This review is from: Coral Sea Dreaming (DVD)
This is a spectacular DVD! If you are looking for some "eye-candy" to impress your friends with your new DVD player, then look no further. The video on this DVD is fantastic, crystal-clear closing in on HDTV clarity. The undersea camera work is great, high caliber work all around. The soundtrack is appropriate to video, relaxing and "new age", done in Dolby Digital. Also, there is a screen saver for your PC on the disk.
There is an education feature of sorts too, if you turn on subtitles, they show up to name the underwater creature(s).
Excellent job all around. Great to view, great to relax too, great to learn from. Can't go wrong with this disk. BTW, I'm just a happy consumer, not associated with the maker/manufacturer.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spectacular!, January 29, 2000
This review is from: Coral Sea Dreaming (DVD)
Spectacular! The video is fantastic. The undersea cinematography is great, high caliber work all around. The soundtrack is appropriate to video, relaxing "new age", done in Dolby Digital. Screen saver and Wallpaper for your PC. It will rank high in my collection of Reef and Ocean videos. I recomend it for a gift to a special friend. This work truely deserves recognition and support. In fact I'm going to look for more work by David Hannan.
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