Malcolm Dent Digital Media Ltd  is the name of the company that we work under. I, together with Carol my wife and Chris my son film and produce travel and commercial DVD  formats  around the world. We also duplicate in all  formats  for  our many  worldwide clients in both PAL and NTSC, and design and host websites for clients, including streaming video.

My name is Malcolm Dent and I have spent the last 30 years making videos of anything that moved - or didn't - as  the  case may  be.  In  the  early nineties my wife Carol and I went on holiday with friends to Pinewood Village  on  the shores of Gallu beach in Kenya. as always I took my camera ( having left the professional gear at home I took a Sony Hi 8 camera just for a record). Above: Carol and I on Carriacou)

Never have I been more envious of BBC cameramen with enormous zoom lenses as when I am trying to capture my subject on a 12 to 1 zoom capability. I would trade most of the useless extras that manufacturers seem convinced that the purchaser wants, for a more powerful optical zoom lens.

While  having dinner with Justin the manager, he mentioned that he needed a video of Pinewood to help attract people to his delightful resort. I explained that I only had a small camera with me,  but the place looked so good that I was sure I could produce enough to help him.

Pinewood beach at various times of the day, from sunrise to sunset

Little  did  I  realise  then  what  a course of events  would  lead  from  that  dinner. I sent the rest of our holiday as I usually do,  getting  up  at sunrise  to film  the shore  creatures,  then  travelling  to various points of  interest to gather material for the video. We then returned to England and I edited the film and sent it back to Kenya for his verdict.

During our second filming trip to Kenya, I linked my home town of Gosport in Hampshire through my Rotary Club with a project run by the Mnarani Hotel, using local people and paying them to produce desks for the local school. Many hotel guests sponsored desks which had their name carved on them.

Happily, he was delighted and ordered 500 copies to distribute to his agents around the world.
What  made  our  video  stand out was the  attention to  detail with the wildlife,  as I would spend hours trying  to film a crab  coming out  of it's sandy  hide-hole on the beach, or remain motionless by a tree trying to  capture a  Humming bird  (I  have  wasted  more  video on Humming  birds  than on any other subject, and never been happy with the end result).

So,  I had finished the project, had a happy client, but I was left in a void,  for I felt that the video would be a useful selling tool, but to whom?  Unusually  for  me  I  had a  flash  of inspiration.  We had arranged  the  holiday with Tropical Places,  who had looked after us  through  their Kenya rep extremely well, so instead of sending them a thank-you note, I sent the video. You  can  imagine  my  amazement  when the CEO rang me up to congratulate me on the video and to ask if we would like to visit some of their locations and make films for them. Over  the next 5 years we travelled around the Caribbean making videos of the Islands,  using the same format that  had worked so well in Kenya.

Malcolm cycling around Kenya

They just arranged all travel and accommodation, and it was left  to me to film and edit as I saw fit and then give them the final edited video, which, apart from very minor changes was just as I had finished it.


Carol accompanied me on several of the trips as I insisted on 2 weeks per location in case of overcast or inclement weather, and when underwater footage was essential, my son Chris came so that we could split our time and double the footage.

Chris relaxing at the Mnarani

We  shot  on average  12  hours  of DV  footage on our VX1000/2000 cameras and I cannot praise them highly enough. Small enough not to attract attention but high quality enough to give sparkling results, it is the still pictures from our video footage that populate these webs.

These have been superseded by Hi def 16:9 cameras which we currently use, but I still have a soft spot for the 4:3 ratio cameras

For the future, we are awaiting our next journey of adventure with our travel partners with anticipation, as they have broadened our horizons to the world through our video work, and we look forward to many more years providing the public with informative, honest appraisals of holidays around the world.

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