The Mother with Xavi Guillen
The Mother with xavi guillen
Xavi Guillen is a Barcelona-based gimbal and camera operator. He recently used NODO’s Inertia Wheels on Netflix’s The Mother, directed by Niki Caro and starring Jennifer Lopez.
NODO Founder, Boyd Hobbs, caught up with Xavi to talk about the experience and why he chose the Inertia Wheels for the job.
Boyd: Tell us a little bit about your role for The Mother.
Xavi: I was the Ronin Tech. It was a big-budget film, as you know, and we were on location in the Canary Islands shooting with two units. That’s where most of the action happened, and they went full remote head package. They had an Oculus, a Libra Head, two Arri SRH-3s, and then they had my Ronin. And surprisingly, the Ronin got used more than expected.
Boyd: Oh, really? Why did it seem like they used the Ronin so much?
Xavi: Because it was fast. It’s a light head that I could put anywhere. The gimbal is already easy to swap between platforms—everything is self-contained, self-powered, no cables, nothing. They wanted the Ronin for cable cam shots, but after some testing, they saw it was a reliable system and had something the other heads did not have. It was fast, light, and compact. So we ended up using it to rig in weird spots where I could just go put the Ronin with my hands. We didn’t need a scissor lift to put an Oculus there or to put a Libra, etc.
Boyd: And was the Ronin used with the Inertia Wheels the whole time?
Xavi: Yes. I’ve used a lot of different wheels, but I went with Inertia Wheels because it offered everything I do with different gadgets in one. I’ve lived through the fight of a gimbal just being a cheap Steadicam, but I see the gimbal as a completely different tool. There are a lot of possibilities. It’s very fast. It’s very light. It’s compact.
The way I see it, you stabilize the shot to create a “tabula rasa” [clean slate], then you input whatever feeling or language you want to play with. For a while, I had the Force Pro if you wanted to go more handheld, I had the joystick if you couldn’t move or it was a tight place, and I had the wheels for precise position. And what I have now found with the Inertia Wheels is that I can basically do everything with the wheels.
So, the Force Pro became more of a backup/gimbal PID control for changing gimbal tuning. With the Inertia Wheels, I can literally offer the DP any language he wants to use. We can go a little bit more handheld, or we can go a little bit more aggressive shake, or we can go more joystick feeling. We can play with higher speeds on the wheels and play with mass and drag.
If I have my Ronin and my wheels set up, I know I can offer all the languages that the gimbal is capable of. And then I have my other gadgets mostly as a backup. The wheels are not just wheels. You know what I mean? They're everything in one.
Boyd: That’s very cool. I love that you see them that way because that’s very much how we would like people to see them. They’re a companion tool to unlock what you can do with a gimbal.
Did that come into play with any of the shots or setups from The Mother?
Xavi: There was this moment where I switched from second unit to main unit, and they chose the Ronin for a hero shot of Jennifer Lopez going through some cars. She exits a building onto a very busy Cuban street, and she starts running, jumping on cars, chasing someone.
They had grips carrying the Ronin, going from down on the ground to high up to capture J.Lo going over the cars and stuff. I set up the wheels and didn’t say anything to the A Cam/Steadicam operator, Sasha Proctor, who I had just met. I just told him, “Okay, here are the speeds, blah blah, okay, let’s go.” And he started playing. This was the A camera shot, and the B camera shot was on a rickshaw handheld with a zoom lens. So obviously, the B shot was super shaky—super dynamic, actually. And they were loving the B camera shot, and the A camera shot was missing something.
I stepped in when I saw a little moment to show Sasha how he could adjust the mass to make the moves faster. He goes to the DP, “Yo, yo, check this out!” They lowered the mass, I adjusted my PID, and they did the shot again, and it still lacked something. So, I showed him the handheld effect on the next shot. He dialed it in a little bit, played with it, and added just a little effect so that it was a little bit messier. And they loved the shot.
It was my first shot with main unit, and it seemed like I passed the “litmus test” that gimbals are usually put through when competing with other more expensive heads—thanks to the “on the go” adjustability, the effects on the wheels, and Sasha being very open to what it could be done with them.
The effect we dialed in was just a little bit of something going on—not too much—just to give it a more organic feel added to the normal “action” wheels operation. Sasha could focus on framing J.Lo in the middle of a very action-packed shot while the wheels gave that background shakiness.
Boyd: Yeah, it’s nice as an operator to add a little bit of something, and you can focus on framing and not have to worry about how the effect looks. It sounds like that unfolded very quickly. You and the operator had a quick exchange about how to add the effects and adjust the mass.
Xavi: Oh yeah. Believe me—J.Lo is there waiting. No one was waiting for us. It just happened between takes. I dialed in some of the effects, and because of the visuals on the wheels, I think it’s very clear the scale and speed and rate, so the operator understood what each parameter did. We did one shot normal, one shot without mass and drag, and one shot with the effect. And the third shot worked.
Boyd: That’s amazing.
Talking broadly, how did you come across the wheels? What was your process of learning to work with them?
Xavi: I started with two very basic wheels. They were just a control. And then I saw what NODO was working on. I started learning about the generated physics of the Inertia Wheels. I’m a little bit of a geek. And when I saw the generated physics thing, I thought, “Okay, this is not just wheels.”
NODO rethought the tool and gave it something more. I didn’t think that was a possibility. I never envisioned that you could generate mass. So, I just bought them because I love technology and found out they opened up new possibilities for the gimbal world while making my gimbal package more compact.
I’m working with DPs and operators to try to make them understand what mass and drag can achieve and how they can change the “background” feel of the shots they operate.
Boyd: Yeah, we are too! I know you have our Inertia Wheels MAX upgrade. Tell me a little bit about what the difference is for you between the brushless wheels and the MAX wheels.
Xavi: The main difference for me is when I have an operator using the MAX, I don’t have to explain to anyone what a motor slip is. I don’t really have to explain what generated physics is because you can no longer feel it. I just tell people like, “You can select the mass. Here you have plastic wheels, you have aluminum wheels, and if you add a little bit more, you have brass wheels.” And then drag, which I explain as a friction pad—and that’s it. I don’t need to warn them about slips or explain that there are actually motors, not counterweights or stuff inside the wheels.
As an operator, you can forget about slips, not have to worry about that in the middle of the shot, and really focus on what you’re doing. So, you don’t have to think about the technology you’re using, just what it’s capable of. I think that that’s the best part—as an operator and as a technician.
