The Video Section — What to Expect, and What RankHigh Does Not Do

How the section runs

After the essay packet is collected, two short video scenarios are played. Questions about each one come immediately after it is shown, and your pencil stays down while the video runs — you cannot take notes during it. Taking notes during the video section is listed among the behaviours FCTC prohibits.

So the whole section rests on what you took in while watching, once, with no way to write anything down and no way to replay it.

RankHigh does not reproduce this format

This is worth stating plainly rather than burying. RankHigh has no video engine and does not produce video scenarios, so nothing here reproduces the twenty questions in this section as they are actually asked.

What RankHigh does instead is train the skill underneath them. Our observation drills show you a written scene, take it away, and ask what was there — the same take-it-in, lose-it, report-it demand, without pretending to be the official format. That is useful practice and it is not the same thing, and any preparation that tells you otherwise is overselling.

For the official format, use FCTC's own materials. FCTC provides a free written test study guide and a paid preparatory class, and FCTC states that materials it provides are the only ones authorized and endorsed by FCTC.

Practising the skill anyway

None of this makes up for not seeing the official format, and it is worth what it is worth: the habits below are what people who are good at this section do while the video plays.

• Sweep a scene in a fixed order every time — left to right, near to far — so nothing is missed because it was dull.
• Count things while you can still see them. Counts are the first thing memory loses.
• Fix positions against something that will not move rather than against your own viewpoint.
• Name what you see in words as you watch. Anything you have said to yourself survives far longer than anything you only looked at.

Related guides

• What Is on the FCTC Firefighter Written Test
• The Essay Packet — Thirty Minutes, Then It Is Taken Away
• FCTC Scoring — Passing, Retaking and How Long a Score Lasts