Weekly Consultation Protocol
The Tuesday consultation is how this course delivers instruction. It is not a check-in. It is the mechanism by which you get critique, direction, and technique instruction — and it only works if you come prepared.
What to bring every Tuesday
1. Work to show. Something visual, playable, or readable that did not exist last Tuesday. Progress you describe verbally but cannot show does not count as progress.
2. A one-page progress report. Submitted in Canvas before class:
- What I completed this week
- What I got stuck on
- What I want critique on today
- What I plan to do next week
3. Your notes from last week. You should be able to point to each piece of direction you were given and say what you did about it.
4. Reference. Whatever you are measuring your work against — the source piece, the target studio's work, the real-world footage. Critique without a reference is opinion.
Meeting structure
The five-hour block is not five hours of meeting. A typical Tuesday:
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 9:00 – 9:30 | Progress reports — both students present briefly |
| 9:30 – 10:45 | Individual consultation and critique, student 1 |
| 10:45 – 12:00 | Individual consultation and critique, student 2 |
| 12:00 – 12:30 | Technique instruction or demonstration as needed |
| 12:30 – 1:50 | Supervised production; instructor available for problem solving |
While one student is in consultation, the other works. Both students attend both critiques when the work is related or the lesson generalizes — hearing critique on someone else's work is one of the more efficient ways to learn to see your own.
How critique works here
Critique in this course follows a fixed sequence. Learn it, because it is also how studio dailies and portfolio reviews run.
1. You present. Thirty to ninety seconds. What is it, what were you going for, where is it in the process, and what do you want feedback on. Do not apologize for the work and do not narrate every problem you already know about — that burns the room's attention on things you have already caught.
2. Description before judgment. The critic says what is actually there before saying whether it works. This sounds slow and it prevents most bad critique.
3. Diagnosis against intent. Does the work do what you said you wanted it to do? A piece can be well made and still fail its own brief.
4. Priorities, ranked. You will receive more notes than you can act on. Notes are ranked so you know which two or three matter this week.
5. Written direction. You leave with specific next steps in writing. If it is not written down, it did not happen.
Receiving critique
The professional skill being taught here is receiving critique without defending. In a studio you will get notes from a supervisor who has thirty seconds and no interest in your reasoning. Practice the following:
- Do not explain why. "The silhouette reads flat" is not answered by "well, the camera was —". Write it down. Ask a clarifying question if you genuinely do not understand the note. Then move on.
- Distinguish the note from the fix. A supervisor telling you the timing feels mushy is reporting a symptom. Diagnosing the cause is your job.
- Take the note you disagree with anyway. Try it. If you were right, you now have evidence. If you were wrong, you learned something. Arguing in the room produces neither.
- Ask for the priority. "Of everything you just said, what are the two things I should fix first?" is the single most useful question in critique.
Giving critique
You will critique your classmate's work every week. This is not a courtesy — learning to articulate why something is not working is what makes you able to fix it in your own work.
- Speak to the work, not the person
- Describe first, judge second
- Be specific enough to be actionable: "frames 40–60" beats "the middle part"
- Ask what they wanted before you say whether they got it
- Offer a direction, not just a problem, when you can
- If you like something, say exactly what and why — positive critique is information too
Absence
If you must miss a Tuesday:
- Notify the instructor in advance
- Submit your progress report in Canvas that day anyway
- Post work-in-progress files or video so critique can be given asynchronously
- Schedule a make-up consultation within the same week
An unexcused absence with no submitted progress costs attendance points and, more importantly, a week of direction you cannot get back. There are only sixteen meetings.
Milestone review weeks
Weeks 6, 11, and 16 are formal reviews. These run differently:
- You present the finished project as you would to a studio: introduce it, play or show it uninterrupted, then discuss
- Both students attend both reviews
- You receive a written instructor critique in addition to verbal notes
- Expect questions about your process and your decisions — this is deliberate interview practice
Dress the presentation up. Play the reel at full resolution, have the build already loaded, have the turntable rendered. Fumbling with file management during your own review is a habit worth breaking now.
A note on scope
The most common failure mode in this course is not laziness. It is a project scoped for a semester being attempted in five weeks. When your Tuesday consultation keeps ending with "I need more time," the answer is usually to cut scope, not to add hours.
Bring scope problems up early. Cutting a shot in Week 3 is planning. Cutting it in Week 6 is damage control.