The Tales of the Whales - Film

During the past 30 years, Al Giddings has gained a reputation as one of the most creative and talented underwater director/cinematographers in the entertainment industry. Never settling for off-the-shelf technology, Giddings' studio is constantly designing innovative camera, lighting and optical systems in all film and video formats.

Al is best known in the industry for his underwater directing and shooting of exciting epics like The Deep, starring Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset, and the James Bond thrillers, For Your Eyes Only, and Never Say Never Again, starring Sean Connery. Giddings recently pushed underwater film techniques and technology to new "depths" as underwater director of photography for The Abyss, 20th Century Fox's blockbuster directed by James Cameron. The Abyss captured an Academy Award nomination for outstanding cinematography. Giddings also directed and filmed Universal's The River Wild, starring Meryl Streep; Columbia's Striking Distance, starring Bruce Willis; PF Productions' Boys, starring Winona Ryder; and the chilling under-ice sequences in Disney's Never Cry Wolf and Fox's Damien-Omen II, starring Gregory Peck. Al Giddings has directed dozens of films for television, including specials on the shipwreck of the Andrea Doria, the North Pole, Galapagos undersea volcanic vents at 8,200 feet, the great whales, and great white sharks. His production, Mysteries of the Sea, for ABC, earned him an Emmy for cinematography. Al's work was showcased in the NOVA special, Visions of the Deep: The Underwater World of Al Giddings, as well as in the ABC-TV World of Discovery special, Shark Chronicles, which won Al his second Emmy Award for cinematography in 1992. Al recently completed filming for the upcoming ABC-TV special, Blue Whales: The Largest Animal on Earth.

Al's topside cinematography also produced the spectacular white-water sequences for CBS's mini-series, Dream West. In l986, he produced and directed Oceanquest, a five-part NBC ocean adventure series which captured the number one slot in prime time ratings. Giddings and his company produced two one-hour specials: In Celebration of Trees, which aired on the Discovery Channel, and a CBS network prime-time special, Titanic: Treasure of the Deep, hosted by Walter Cronkite.

In 1990, Giddings completed filming Water: Gift of Life, in Betacam SP. Ocean Symphony, a music video directed and filmed by Al, was awarded the American Film Institute's highest award in Natural History Programming.