It's not too late to find your place

Throughout the video, music is playing but no dialogue is heard.

The video opens with a shot of a young woman in a dark coat and black baseball cap walking towards the camera, her long dark hair behind her and a slight smile on her face. She is walking on the grass verge of a leafy street, with lots of trees behind her and a large building in the background. As she walks, she arranges her coat, shrugging her shoulders slightly and pulling it close around her.

She walks past the camera and we see that she is walking towards the main entrance of Harrogate College. The building is red brick, with bright blue signage and yellow text saying ‘Harrogate College’. There are long windows along the side of the building, and a bike
chained up on the left of the frame.

Next, we see a student sitting on one side of a long table opposite a teacher. The student is using a pair of scissors to cut something out, and the table has many pieces of paper on it. The camera shows us what is on the pieces of paper – it’s black paint on squares of white paper: three handprints on the right-hand side of the shot, something that looks like a leaf, and abstract shapes. The piece that the student was cutting out and now is putting down on the table is a line painting of what looks like an eye.

We see a teacher pointing towards the camera, against the dark wall of the photography studio, and holding a large light in one hand. He is wearing a maroon jumper and a silver watch, and an expression of concentration – it appears he’s directing someone off-screen. As he moves the light down, it fills the left-hand side of the frame with white light. There is a blur as the scene changes, and now we see the same teacher on the right of the shot, smiling, stood next to a student. The student is taking a picture, with a professional-looking camera held up to his face – we can just make out a Canon logo behind the student’s hand, and the camera has a long thin flash attached to it. We can only see the subject that the student is photographing from behind, someone with long and glossy black hair. Once the student has taken the photograph, he moves the camera away from his face to look at the back of the camera, and someone else walks towards him and the teacher so that they can all look at it together. They appear pleased with the shot, the photographer and teacher smiling and the third person doing a small fist pump in appreciation.

Next, we move to the kitchens, where students study Cookery and Catering courses. The kitchen is painted white, with metal shelves and surfaces – the shelves hold piles of sieves, colanders, graters and pans. We are seeing a student wearing chef’s whites, sleeves pushed up above the elbow, and a dark blue and white striped apron. He is kneading some dough, working his fingers into the mixture, and a close-up shows us his deft movement as he works the dough onto a floured surface. The next shot is of some small, neat buns being
removed from the oven, followed by them being painted with a glossy, syrupy liquid. The six small buns are lightly browned, studded with dried fruit, sitting neatly in a baking tray.

We move on to the Carpentry & Joinery workshop. A student wearing ear defenders and goggles is supervised by a teacher as he uses a large piece of machinery: labelled Dewalt, it comprises a large rotating blade that the student pushes down with one hand, using the other hand to steady the piece of wood he is cutting.

We are now watching two people sat at a computer; on one of the two screens in front of them is a 3D rendering of a room, and the other has what looks like a shot of the inside of the room itself, perhaps a shot from a videogame. The room we are seeing on the second
screen looks industrial, in silver, white and blue, with two large crates in the foreground. The camera spins away so that we are now looking at the two people from the front, a teacher explaining something to the student as he clicks on the mouse on the table in front of the computer screen.

Next, we see two people in an art studio, one wearing a pink and white striped apron and holding a paintbrush. The scene is one of organised chaos, with lots of items laid out on the workbench in front of them – bottles, sprays, a tiered cake stand, more paintbrushes, trowels and pallet knives. The close-up shot shows a brush smoothly painting brown paint onto an oval piece of wood, a repurposed yoghurt pot holding the paint while a larger brush rests on top of it.

Now to the Science laboratory. The laboratory is clean and white, with teal shelves holding textbooks, and the same teal providing a bright splash of colour to the workbenches. and metal equipment neatly lined up. Three people in white lab coats and safety goggles are
talking together, as the man in the foreground of the video pours an opaque liquid from a bulb test tube to a large beaker. Next a close-up of someone holding a test tube which is about a third full of a clear orange liquid, pipetting drops into it. And now a wide shot of three students supervised by a teacher, again all in lab coats, as one student pours liquid from a test tube into a beaker. Now one student is leaning over a workbench, smiling while she makes a precise movement to transfer liquids into a test tube.

A close-up shot of two bricks, as a hand presses a spirit level alongside them to ensure they are straight. A student wearing a grey hoodie holds a brick in one hand and applies concrete onto it using a trowel in his other hand, using one smooth, deft motion.

Two female students and a teacher are sat together, holding dolls of babies. One student is smoothing out some fabric as the other lays the doll down on the fabric, perhaps to swaddle or dress it; in the next shot, the teacher is explaining how to fold the fabric as one student lovingly supports the doll.

We see a student buttoning a pair of dark overalls, stood in a large industrial-looking room. The next shot has two students gathered next to a teacher – they all wear the same dark overalls and thick safety goggles, with the teacher wearing a thick brown apron and heavy
gloves up to his elbow. The teacher is welding, and bright gold sparks explode in the centre of the shot, like a miniature firework.

We now see a student and teacher open the bonnet of a car, and lean in to investigate – they’re in a garage, and in the background, lots of industrial machinery can be spotted. Next, a close-up of hands in blue latex gloves turning a socket wrench.

Now to the light and airy hairdressing salon. On the right-hand side of the frame, we see a lady with a black towel wrapped around her shoulders, half her damp hair clipped up to the top of her head, as she leans forward. The rest of her hair is being pulled straight down her back, by the young hairdressing student who is sitting behind her. Standing behind both of them is a teacher and all three of them are laughing. The hairdressing student gently combs through the lady’s hair, and now the camera spins to a close-up of her hands – she’s holding a length of the damp blonde hair between her fingers, and a pair of hairdressing scissors. The hair is cut neatly straight across.

Elsewhere in the salon, another student is smiling as she neatly pins an elaborate updo into place. There’s a close-up of long brown hair being braided into a plait, and of a client having her hair washed in the salon sinks, water flowing as a student gently lathers shampoo into her hair. We now see a shot of one of the teachers laughing with her students.

Returning to the woodworking workshop, a student is seen working on an elaborate wooden window frame – it has a curved top, like a church-style window. The student is leaning through the slats to attend to the mechanism.

Back in the kitchen, we see the baker from earlier raising a whisk as a teacher supervises his work – she also wears chef’s white and a blue apron, and her bun is covered by a blue hair net. They’re both smiling widely.

Text: For students who want more visit harrogate-college.ac.uk
Harrogate College