Production sprint I

Mon 2:00 · Brief Sprint kickoff & a trailer shot in five minutes

There was no class on Nov 25 — Thanksgiving — so this is the first of two production sprints before the final. From here on, class is a studio, not a lecture. You show up, you set a goal, you ship it, you get a crit.

How a sprint block works

A sprint is not "work on your project." It is: name one thing you will finish before you leave, make it small enough to actually finish, and finish it. "Add a win state," "record the intro shot," "fix the double-jump bug" — those are sprint goals. "Make the game better" is not. The discipline of scoping to a single block is exactly the discipline you need to ship a final, so we practice it every week from here to the end.

Why we cover Sequencer and the Cine Camera Actor now

Your final is graded on the build, but it lives or dies on how you present it. A trailer and a documentation reel are how anyone who isn't holding the controller sees your work. The Cine Camera Actor gives you real camera language — framing, dollies, cuts, filmback and focus — without hand-keying a transform. Sequencer sequences those cameras and animations into a shot you can play back and render. Learn the tool now and you can cut a trailer in an afternoon instead of a weekend.

The five-minute demo

Watch me do the whole loop once before you touch it: I drop a Cine Camera Actor, aim it at the hero prop, add a Level Sequence in Sequencer with a Camera Cuts track, blend from a wide to a close camera, and render. Thirty seconds of usable footage from three minutes of setup. That's the workflow you'll repeat for every shot in your trailer.

Mon 2:45 · Guided lab One trailer shot, then studio

We build a single camera move together so you own the workflow, then the rest of the block is structured studio time on your own build.

1. Add a Cine Camera Actor

   From the Place Actors panel (or Cinematic category), drag a Cine Camera Actor into your level. It's a real film camera with filmback, focal length, and manual focus — position it and pilot it to compose. Think of it as a camera operator you can place and hand off to Sequencer.

2. Frame a hero shot

   Point the camera at the most important thing in your scene — the player, a boss, a signature environment. Pilot the camera to line up the composition, then dial the Focal Length and Focus settings to compose it deliberately. A good hero shot reads in one second with the sound off.

3. Create a Level Sequence

   From the toolbar's Cinematics → Add Level Sequence, create and name a new sequence asset. This opens Sequencer — your shot's score, where every camera, animation, and cut lives on a track and plays back on a clock you control.

4. Add a second camera and a Camera Cuts track

   Duplicate your Cine Camera Actor, reframe the copy as a closer or wider angle, then add both cameras to Sequencer and create a Camera Cuts track. Drop a section for each camera onto the track — the order on the track is the order on screen.

5. Animate the camera move and blend the cut

   Overlap the two camera sections on the Camera Cuts track: Sequencer blends the overlap into a smooth transition, so a wide eases into a close. For a physical move within one shot, key the camera's transform or attach it to a Camera Rig Rail to slide along a spline path. Scrub the playhead until the timing feels right.

6. Render with the Movie Render Queue

   Open Window → Cinematics → Movie Render Queue, add your Level Sequence as a job, set the output to an MP4 or PNG sequence at your target resolution, and render. You now have a clean, repeatable clip — not a screen-grab.

7. Then: structured studio

   Close the demo scene and open your final. Write your sprint goal for this block on the board, then work. I'll be moving desk to desk for crits — have your goal and your current blocker ready when I reach you.

Mon 2:00 · Agent lab Your agent, your pipeline

This block is self-directed. Set the goal at 2:00, work with your agent to hit it, demo the result at 3:10. The log is habit by now — keep it running.

Mon 3:35 · Crit / share Desk-crit round-up

We close the sprint by going around the room fast: each person states the goal they set at 2:00, shows whether they hit it, and names the one blocker they're carrying into next week. I'll surface the patterns I saw at the desks — the bug three of you hit, the scope creep two of you fell into. This is triage, not a full crit: the point is that everyone leaves with a clear next action and nobody carries a silent blocker into Production sprint II.

Homework — due before Week 14

Resources

• Unreal Sequencer — the cinematics system: cameras, cuts, blends, rails, and composition.
• Cine Camera Actor — the film camera: filmback, focal length, and focus for deliberate framing.
• Movie Render Queue — render your sequences to high-quality video or image sequences for your trailer.