Ron Howard Breaks Down a Cave Diving Scene from 'Thirteen Lives'

I later found out

that there were a couple panic attacks involved.

Colin's admitted it, Tom Bateman's admitted it, even Viggo.

He said there were some pretty precarious moments for him.

Hi, I'm Ron Howard,

I'm the director of the movie Thirteen Lives,

and I'm here with Vanity Fair to give you Notes on a Scene.

[water sloshing]

[John] Hey.

They're here.

How many?

[boys chattering in foreign language]

This sequence, one of the most critical in the movie,

the experienced cave divers,

played by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell,

here they are at what they called Pattaya Beach.

We were able to get some schematics

of the cave when it's dry,

but nobody knew better than Rick Stanton

and John and the divers.

Rick's job was to just kind of convey the challenge

and Molly Hughes's job was to turn that into architecture,

design cave units, which were made, first, in styrofoam,

so that I could begin to design shots that would work,

also to build caves that would hold up.

It's a hard enough, tough enough resin

sort of reinforced substance

so that it could take people actually bumping up against it.

When the divers first saw these tunnels, the real divers,

they couldn't believe how authentic and accurate they were,

and the actors couldn't believe how tight

and terrifying they were. [chuckles]

Right.

I'll keep left.

[indistinct]

[line whirs]

The accent was crucially important to Viggo and Colin,

but Viggo had a tremendous advantage

in that the real rescue diver, Rick Stanton,

was our technical advisor.

Viggo had the person

that he was playing around all the time.

Nuances, attitude, behavior,

along with movement was something

that Viggo was just intent on trying to get and get right.

[water bubbling]

[dramatic music]

This particular scene is just another example of us

when we're shooting above water.

We had a camera out on an arm in a water housing

so that it could dunk underwater

and it wouldn't ruin the camera.

And we also always had a second camera, an operator,

just really old school.

Just standing there

with a plastic bag wrapped around the camera

and standing in handheld getting coverage as well.

[dramatic music]

[water bubbling]

Look how he's struggling to get through. That's real.

We didn't rehearse very much

because we wanted the spontaneity of it,

but here you can see that was Viggo.

Simon Christidis, the camera operator, is in with him.

He's a world-class underwater photographer and brilliant.

We tended to only do a couple of takes

because we didn't want our divers getting comfortable.

They learned the underwater cave diving technique,

which is very specific.

Viggo really asked if he could do it.

Colin Farrell agreed. He joined in.

All the actors were going to have to do extensive diving.

I had no idea that they could do 100%.

Within about a week or so,

not only had it been established

that they could do this safely,

but that's when Viggo came to me with real passion and said,

Please schedule this

so that I can do all of my underwater work.

I'll do it.

All the other actors agreed, and it was remarkable.

So here, in our set, you can see

that his body is pressed both top and bottom

against the rock.

And there you go.

Who's that?

Colin Farrell, nobody else.

Cave divers don't use gloves

because they have to feel their way along,

so they get a lot of cuts and scratches on their hands.

And in the beginning, we were doing all that with makeup.

And after a day or two of shooting,

they didn't need any more makeup.

They had their own cuts and scrapes

that they had earned along the way.

[water bubbling]

[air hissing]

This is a shot that was operated by Colin Farrell.

Here, I wanted a sense of what's going on,

both in the foreground and in the background.

So that's Viggo heading in.

We learned that in some of these tight spaces,

it was impossible to actually get a diver in there.

And so for many of the POV shots,

I found that our divers were adept enough

that an assistant camera operator

could actually hand them a camera

and they could get into some of these tight spaces

and do things like this murky POV

mysteriously moving through.

Which, if you could look on YouTube

at something called sump diving,

then you see a lot of shots just like this.

The ability for me to do these kinds of shots,

which are much more like documentary shots,

the whole thing can unfold,

creates much more suspense and tension and authenticity,

in my opinion.

[line whirs]

[Rick sniffs]

Smell that?

[John sniffs]

Yeah.

Smell that. that's a line

directly out of Rick Stanton's mouth.

This is the moment that they popped up,

and they thought they were smelling corpses, most likely.

[Rick] Nearly out of line.

Nearly out of line, he says.

Now, we're in this cave that, of course, is also a tank.

We have the ability to raise

and lower the water level by a few feet.

But this line of dialogue,

We're nearly out of line, that wasn't in the script.

Rick Stanton was there as our technical advisor.

And he said, Oh, by the way, I was really concerned

because we were almost outta line at that point.

Of course we'd known that enough

to have the line near the bottom.

But as soon as Viggo heard that, he said,

Can we do another take?

We went back and reshot this master again

so that Viggo could say the line

and, again, help build the suspense as it really unfolded.

[diver gasping]

[John] Hey.

These cave sets are very, very challenging,

lots of drips and things like that built into it,

and the lighting, by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom,

had to be very naturalistic.

So it's just basic fill,

letting the natural lighting primarily drive it.

I had thought that we should approach the caves,

as often as possible, almost like entering a haunted house.

Certainly, we've set up the audience to believe

that they're gonna encounter corpses, not the boys.

This is a moment that was very much influenced

by a video that the real John Volanthen took on a GoPro

that became world famous.

It's as much a recreation as we could possibly make it.

They're here.

How many?

[boys chattering in foreign language]

This was the first shot of the movie.

We had to start with this cave for production purposes.

You would not normally choose this most crucial scene

to begin the movie with,

but Bill Connor, my longtime first AD,

who's also a producer on this movie,

and I went over and over this.

And logistically, we were boxed into this problem

because we needed to shoot this set out, take it away,

and use that tank for another cavern.

In fact, it was the cavern that you just saw

at the beginning of this exercise,

so these kinds of things sometimes force your hand.

[boys chattering in foreign language]

I'll never forget the excitement.

This is a camera down low on a crane.

The back of the set, we've taken out

so that the crane arm could get in there.

But the cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom,

likes to operate as well,

and he's a very good operator.

He's actually hiding at this point off camera over here,

and in a moment, we're gonna see the shot

that he's actually doing simultaneously

while we do this shot of these boys' feet emerging

out of the darkness.

My approach was that this was the Anatomy of a Miracle,

and so I thought this sort of mysterious shot

following the coach, Coach Ek,

played by actor James Teeradon,

that is the camera that Sayombhu Mukdeeprom was operating

off to the left of the crane.

I never gave Sayombhu very strict instructions.

His gift is discovering, in a very intimate way,

the dynamics of a scene and the way a shot can unfold.

Even a film like this

where I wanted sort of a documentary feel

and certainly a very naturalistic feel,

I still have a very thorough shot list,

but I also recognize the talents of the people around me.

And with a camera operator like Sayombhu,

he's so intuitive that his natural storyteller guides him

and his connection to characters.

Then when I'm watching the monitor, I might say,

Oh, I see what you're going for.

Let's just make sure we stay

with the subject a little longer,

or, Why don't you hold off on that rack focus

or maybe start on their hand and then tip up?

But I like to see where their intuition takes them.

I work kind of that way with almost everyone on the crew,

and I also try to build that kind of a bridge

toward collaboration with the actors.

I always have my plan,

which I try to really thoughtfully lay out.

I have my point of view,

which I put hours and hours into forming,

but I'm also excited when somebody comes along

and puts their personal stamp on a moment,

and it still works for the movie my way

or maybe even better than anything

I might have conceived of.

I get a certain kind of thrill and a rush when that happens.

This was the first day of shooting,

and it was immediately, Note to self,

keep a camera in Sayombhu's hand as much as possible.

[boys chattering in foreign language]

[John] Hello?

[Boys] Hello?

Hello? How'd they done that?

These boys are from Northern Thailand.

All but one had never done any acting at all.

The northern dialect is very, very specific.

Our Thai producing partners were there in large part

to help us understand those sort of cultural nuances

so that we could really get it right.

We didn't rehearse this formally very much.

The actors were so blown away

by the performance of our non-acting kids

from Northern Thailand.

They didn't know what to expect.

I didn't really know what to expect,

even though I had worked with the boys.

I found them very open and willing.

They were right for their roles.

But I had no idea that they could carry off a long scene

in such a disciplined, focused way.

And the actors were amazed.

And on this first day, both Viggo and Colin,

if you look at Viggo's eyes, of course, he's a great actor,

and that's a moment of observing

something kind of miraculous and unexpected

that the boys are actually alive,

but they all said that between Molly Hughes's sets,

the water, their own gear and training,

and the authenticity of these boys,

it told them that right then and there on day one

that they were not gonna have to force their performances.

They could just inhabit these sets

and engage with these characters.

[boys chattering in foreign language]

[Boys] Hello?

The boys that were so well-prepared,

they just inhabited these characters.

Not only did they know their lines and were they rehearsed,

but they had really become a team.

They really were focused.

They'd been led through a series of acting exercises

by Billy, by me,

to make them understand what it felt like to be there.

And James, the coach, who's down here,

he learned to meditate.

He actually went to a monastery

and studied with a monk for a few days

to reinforce his understanding

of really proper meditation techniques,

and he began teaching the boys to meditate

and meditate properly, first, for the scene,

but then he began to realize

that it was benefiting the boys.

What we began to do is we gave him 15 minutes with the boys,

we darkened the set, and they meditated,

and it was making a team out of these boys.

This was the first day of shooting.

The last day of shooting was also with them,

and you could just see the confidence that had grown,

their understanding, their sense of themselves,

their relationship with their families.

All of it was something that I took a lot of pride in

'cause I felt that the production

had been a constructive experience for them.

[boy chattering in foreign language]

English. English.

English?

[boys chattering in foreign language]

Now here, you can see

that we've put the back of the set back in

and then Molly had devised this ingenious approach.

Basically it was just a couple of double doors

that we could open up for safety access also.

We also had an opening over here on the side

and one down here,

which was important for getting cameras into position,

but also very important for access.

As we got all of the the angles

that were shooting back toward the divers finished,

we closed those doors,

it was a matter of a five-minute process,

brought the cameras around

and began shooting this way toward the inside of the cave.

How many of you? 11.

[Smart] 13.

[John] 13?

They're all alive.

13? That's brilliant.

[boys chattering in foreign language]

Very interesting to me because Viggo talked a lot

to Rick Stanton about this particular moment,

as did Colin Farrell talked to John Volanthen.

You can see that Colin's expressing

this kind of optimism and this excitement.

He's a father. He's totally committed.

Oh my God, thankfully they're alive.

And Rick was immediately assessing the situation and saying,

I cannot see a way that we can ever rescue them.

It was almost like he was seeing ghosts.

He didn't even wanna make eye contact.

Both actors did a great job with that much dialogue,

establishing sort of a dichotomy

between the two of them then and there.

[boys chattering in foreign language]

Can we go out now?

So there's an example of dialogue

that wasn't particularly written.

The boy was supposed to immediately go

into his line in English.

Of course, we cast a boy

who was supposed to be the captain of the team.

He's not only tall, he's thin,

but he also can speak a bit of English.

Very helpful for me in he became a sort of an ally

and an assistant in a lot of ways

in terms of communicating with the other boys.

[John] No, not today.

Now there are just two of us, we must dive,

but many people are coming.

Now we're back to the shot that was done from day one.

The crane arm is in

and two other camera operators are shooting behind the boys.

We had a camera over here,

we had a camera tucked in over here,

and then, of course, the crane getting this wide.

They're starting at full with their tanks

and kit and so forth

'cause they're gonna have to get it and move out.

The first time we said,

Well, we're gonna have to cut there,

because they're just simply not that adept

at getting their tanks going.

By the third take, Viggo and Colin said,

We can do it. We got it.

And in the natural flow,

they already had that kind of command

of their gear, their kit.

I mean, they had to be sore.

They had to be sore at the end of this day.

It's okay, we are the first,

but many will come, many more.

You've been here 10 days, 10 days.

You're very strong, very strong.

We are hungry.

He's a skinny kid. His name is Smart.

He's not that skinny.

We did do some digital enhancement.

Now they're all naturally thin,

we cast them for that reason,

but, of course, we didn't, in any way,

suggest restricting their diet ever.

This is where digital technology was really our friend

to be able to take it to that next level.

I know, I know.

I know, I understand.

Okay, go back. We will come.

Go on back.

[boys chattering in foreign language]

James was such an important leader.

He's a big pop star, he's a successful actor,

they all knew him.

He demonstrated so much discipline,

and he sort of embodied the coach

in the same way that the divers took on the task

of doing all the diving themselves.

He was there barefoot working with those boys

and providing just a tremendous amount of leadership.

He's like a big kid but not there shooting.

He totally embodied the discipline of Coach Ek,

a character, a person who he really respects,

as does the Thai population at large now.

What day you come and help us?

We help tomorrow. Tomorrow?

[John] Yeah, more divers.

Colin Farrell, so engaged

with his character John Volanthen,

who is an ultra-marathon runner

in addition to being a cave diver,

just on his own accord,

Colin decided he would start training for a marathon.

I thought that was really interesting,

but, I mean, he was working so hard.

He was lifting the tanks.

He would be in a wetsuit for 10, 12 hours, and then go run

because he was determined to run this one marathon.

Can't say that I really knew about it

until very close to it.

By that point, when he said,

I'm gonna run this Sunday, which was a day off,

couldn't put on my producer hat and say,

No, no, that's not allowed. Forget it.

I kept his secret between us, he ran the marathon.

He said, I'm gonna be fine on Monday.

He showed up on Monday.

He wasn't exactly fine, but he did every shot,

and I showed no mercy. [chuckles]

'Cause, you know, we gotta do the work,

and he understood that.

We had a laugh, he accomplished that,

and he said it was kind of life-altering.

I was very proud of this scene on a number of levels.

We sort of have a proof of concept,

a very ambitious sequence

that we did right at the beginning of the film,

but it suggested that all the emphasis

on research, on naturalism,

on engaging with these boys and the other Thai actors

to own their characters,

to help us understand how to develop things further,

to suggest ideas for lines of dialogue and behaviors.

That was paying off to a really remarkable extent

and sort of reinforced this spontaneous

kind of unplanned shooting

that I wanted to use as our approach to the staging

and execution of these scenes.

The production design just worked on a functional level,

and all of it very cohesively comes together

for this pivotal moment in the movie.

This event is so fresh in everybody's mind,

and there's been a lot of coverage,

there have been documentaries.

That was the one thing

that we could do with a dramatization

with actors and a script is through the performances

and through the sense of reality

of the environment that we could create,

to offer more empathy and connection for audiences

so that we could engage, not only the mind and the heart,

but also the nervous system, a sense of concern

over what these people were living through,

what they were achieving,

the sacrifices they were making,

and what this outcome would ultimately mean to them.