Thirteen Lives Production Designer Molly Hughes on recreating a treacherous flooded cave system

For Thirteen livesProduction designer Molly Hughes was commissioned to build a set based on Thailand’s Tham Luang cave system. The challenge was to create a flooded cave system narrow enough to be realistic but large enough to accommodate the actors and cameras. The film, directed by Ron Howard, is based on the true story of the Thai soccer team trapped in a flooded cave and the brave rescue volunteer divers who rescued them. While the event was highly documented, there was little documentation about the cave system, so Hughes instead focused on what would work best for the story. Early in production, the actors decided they wanted to do the dives instead of stunt doubles.

DEADLINE: What was the process of rebuilding this cave?

MollyHughes: It’s interesting because we’ve had so much research from people, right? This is an event that has been seen around the world and there have been so many photos. There were so many journalists from all over the world there so two years later you have access to photo after photo after photo but what you don’t have are photos from inside the cave because there was no view. So there are some photos of the entrance and some photos, probably of an inner room or cave, but that’s about it. A lot of people didn’t know it, but we also built the entrance and the stairs and the base camp was built. We had so much freedom because we were starting from scratch, so I was able to line up the cave entrance in a way that worked for our script and scene flow. In a way, there was a lot of freedom in this design, which was actually pretty good.

DEADLINE: How do you make the rooms so the cameras can film?

HUGHES: That was probably the biggest challenge. After finding our location for the exterior, we started the building process and started drawing. Then we moved on to the challenge of how to build these underwater sets in a way that is accessible and interesting. How do we shoot into what must be darkness? So we started with what happens when Saman dies and what happens when Chris loses control. We needed a moment where Chris loses the line and he gets lost. So a tunnel full of stalactites seemed like a good place to do it because it’s confusing and you don’t know which way you’re going. So I designed this long tunnel, it was about 90 feet long with a section in it where the line could get so high that it couldn’t reach it. You had to think about the height and all that stuff and then have an area that has enough room for cameras left or right or above to look down.

The tunnels all had camera ports or were missing a foot or two from the side. One of them was 90 feet long and the whole side was outward, so it was flat. It was creatively called the long shallow tunnel, and it was so shallow that you had to walk on your stomach and the child had to be next to or in front of you at certain points, and they were never under you, that’s how you wanted them in Ideal carry in the higher rooms. So in these rooms the camera can be to the side. Now something happened when the main actors decided they wanted to do their own stunts, which happened pretty quickly in the filming process. They got a camera and when they got more comfortable in the water they had Colin hold a camera himself and swim horizontally through it and it really helped to get some great close-ups in space. But it was really about her. They were really willing to go for it. And we had an amazing stunt team, an incredible diving team that pushed me to my limits.

DEADLINE: When you first built the sets and planned everything, did you expect the actors to choose to perform their own stunts?

HUGHES: No, we were prepared for doubles in those areas. But part of my design is also face masks, choosing the right face masks and making sure you can see the actors’ faces through them. We ended up with these clear masks that all had clear sides so the light could come through and their faces could be seen. So we needed those moments and the plan was to make sure you could get moments, reactions to the faces, and then there would be double plays where you could never see their faces. And I think the actors intuitively realized that it would be so much better if they were and there would be so much more footage to show the audience who was walking by.