Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom on the film Thirteen Lives and working with director Ron Howard

The film Thirteen Lives is about the rescue of the Thai soccer team
who were trapped in an underwater cave in 2018 for 18 days.
Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who is Thai, knew that it was
important to make the film seem as realistic as possible since
everyone in Thailand was very familiar with the story. He liked
director Ron Howard's movie Apollo 13, which vividly dramatized a
real-life event, so he was excited to work with Howard on Thirteen
Lives, a true story he was familiar with. After reading the script,
Thirteen Lives was a movie he could clearly see in his head,
because it dealt with people against the elements. Sayombhu decided
to approach the film like a documentary, as though the viewer is
right there in the cave with the characters. His first task was to
think about how to shoot and light underwater, and he worked
closely with the second unit crew to find the best methods. When
shooting, Sayombhu did a lot of handheld camerawork, operating the
B camera on first unit. He would actually occasionally duck
underwater with the camera, so that it looked as dynamic as
possible, even though the second unit handled most of the
underwater work. The caves were all a set built in Australia,
except for some exterior shots of the real cave in Thailand.
Because the caves had no light sources at all, Sayombhu knew all
the light had to be motivated. He had to pick the color and
intensity of the light, and figure out where to place lights and
cameras during the cave design set build. The actors became part of
his lighting crew, since much of the light had to come from their
flashlights and headlamps. Sayombhu would often ask them to hold
the lights and point them up or down to help illuminate the scene-
actors Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell practically became a part
of the lighting crew, he jokes. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom IMDB:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1178928/ Thirteen Lives is currently on
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