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

i later found out that there were a couple of panic attacks involved collins admitted it tom bateman's admitted it even vigo he said there were some pretty precarious moments for him hi i'm ron howard i'm the director of the movie 13 lives and i'm here with vanity fair to give you notes on a scene hey we're here how many 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 right i'll keep left field out for bodies the accent was crucially important to vigo and colin but vigo had a tremendous advantage in their the real rescue diver rick stanton was our technical advisor vigo had the person that he was playing around all the time nuances attitude behavior along with movement was something that vigo was just intent on trying to get and get right this particular scene is just another example of us when we were 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 wouldn't ruin the 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 [Music] 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 christides 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 a hundred percent within about a week or so not only had it been established that they could do this safely but that's when vigo 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 you know agreed and uh it was remarkable so here in our set you can see that you know 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 their own cuts and scrapes that they had earned along the way 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 vigo 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 look on youtube at something called sump diving then you see a lot of shots just like this the ability for me to 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 yeah smell that that's that's a line directly out of rick stanton's mouth this is the moment that they that they popped up and they thought they were smelling corpses most likely nearly outlined 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 were 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 you know we were almost out of line at that point of course we'd known that enough to have the line near the bottom but as soon as vigo 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 hey these cave sets are very very challenging lots of drips and things like that built into it and the lighting by sciampa mukti prom 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 going to encounter corpses not 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 we're here this was the first shot of the movie we had to start with this cave for production purposes you wouldn't normally choose this most crucial scene to begin the movie with but um bill connor my long time uh first a.d 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 uh force your hands 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 syampu diprom 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 going to see the shot that he's actually doing simultaneously while we do this shot of these boys feet emerging uh 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 eck played by actor james tiridan that is the camera that sayampu mukti prom was operating off to the left of the crane i never gave sayampu 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 it's 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 sayampu 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 and i also try to build that kind of 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 and this was the first day of shooting and it was immediately note to self keep a camera in syampu's hand as much as possible hello hello hello 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 um 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 the same on this first day both vigo and colin if you look at vigo'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 the boys that were so well prepared they just inhabited these these characters not only did they know their lines and where they rehearsed but they had really become a team they really were focused they'd been led through a series of acting exercises by by billy by me to make them understand what it felt like to be there and 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 and 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 you know something that i took a lot of pride in because i felt like that the production had been a constructive experience for him 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 uh 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 13 13. they're all alive 13. very interesting to me because vigo talked a lot to rick stanton about this particular moment as did colin farrell talk to john vlanthan and 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 he was seeing ghosts he didn't even want to make eye contact both actors did a great job with that much dialogue establishing um sort of a dichotomy between the two of them then and there 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 in english of course we cast a boy 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 and he became a sort of an ally and an assistant in a lot of ways in terms of communicating with the other boys no not today no 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 to fool with their tanks and kit and so forth because they're going to have to get it and move out the first time we said well we're going to have to cut there because they're they they just simply not that adapt 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 but but many will come anymore we do ten days ten days you are very strong very shy 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 back james was such an important leader he's a big pop star he's a successful actor they all knew him and 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 their shooting he totally embodied the discipline of coach eck a character a person who he really respects as does you know the thai population at large now uh what day you come and help us we hope tomorrow wow yeah more diverse 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 you know 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 i couldn't put on my producer hat and say no no that's not allowed forget it i kept it his secret between us he ran the marathon he said i'm going to be fine on monday he showed up on monday he wasn't exactly fine but he did every shot and i showed no mercy because you know we we got we got to 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 the scene on a number of levels it was sort of 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 to a really remarkable extent and sort of reinforce 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 uh 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 uh empathy and connection for audiences so that we could engage not only the the mind and the heart but also the nervous system you know 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

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Id: EugF1ty6bNo

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022