REEL LIFE / FILM & VIDEO FILE : Oceanic Artists Move Show to Bigger Facility : Tickets won’t be a problem this year as the Underwater Photographic Society presents its ’94 collection at the 1,600-seat Oxnard Civic Auditorium.

The Channel Islands Underwater Photographic Society moves to the big room as it steps up from a modest community center to the Oxnard Civic Auditorium for its annual show Saturday.

Organizer Terry Reid of Oxnard said the group used to sell out the 550-seat community center as much as a month in advance, but the 1,600-seat auditorium means tickets should be available until show time.

Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of underwater pioneer Jacques Cousteau, will be master of ceremonies for “Underwater ‘94,� a collection of eight submarine videos, films and slide shows. The 2 1/2-hour show includes a documentary on whale skeletons discovered in a South Pacific cave and a video on rescuing injured sea lions on the Channel Islands.

“The guy who did the sea lion rescue has a helmet mounted-camera,� said Dave Reid, dive club vice president. “They stalk gill-netted sea lions, stalk them with camouflage and the whole thing. When they get close enough, they charge and you get this picture bouncing down the beach with sea lions running in 99 different directions. It’s just pandemonium.�

The animals, once captured, are unbound and treated for any injuries they might have sustained from the nets.

Also on the program is “Sea Flight,� a slide show of pictures from the Channel Islands kelp forests with music, and a BBC feature on an eight-inch shrimp that clubs its prey to death with a claw that delivers a blow equal to a .22-caliber bullet.

Cousteau will do two presentations, the first a feel-good documentary about Jojo, an unusually friendly dolphin in the Caribbean that seeks out human contact. The second film features a less cuddly marine life form--plankton.

“Actually, they’re quite beautiful,� Reid said. “They’re in strands that run through water, and if you light them properly they are like living rainbows.�

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. For tickets call the auditorium at 486-2424.

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The makers of “Saviors of the Forest,� a funny and irreverent documentary on rain forest destruction and the environmental movement, will be on hand for Sunday’s screening of their film at the Ojai Playhouse.

Bill Day and Terry Schwartz will answer questions before and after the presentation of this often hilarious film that attempts to show how political action to save the world’s rain forests will necessarily be filled with paradox and ambiguity.

In the course of producing an environmental news program, the two filmmakers meet an Ecuadorean Indian who persuades them to visit his country to make a film that will help save his native rain forest.

The result is a vaudevillian look at the realities of developing nations and their uses of the environment. Giddy humor and homespun self-confession leavens the apocalyptic gloom typical of environmental discussions.

The film will be shown at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave. Admission is $6.

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Do you think your recorded telephone message is exceptionally fine? Do friends comment on how warm and confident you sound telling them you’re not home? Might that translate into a career in voice-overs?

Probably not.

James Thomason, the voice casting director for Disney’s animation department, said there’s a huge supply of talent and those who do make it have to work awfully hard. Still, anyone who fights his way to the top can make big bucks.

“All through one night of prime time you hear one voice between shows--’coming up next and later tonight’--that sort of thing,� he said. “That guy’s getting a good quarter million a year. And there’s lots of other work beside that, but the numbers are against you. If you’re thinking about selling real estate and going to voice-overs a couple of days a week, forget it.�

Still not discouraged? Thomason will teach a workshop Saturday at Learning Tree University in Thousand Oaks on how to break into the biz. It runs from 2 to 5 p.m.