Getting to talk some accessibility in videos at work

We had a couple of video shoots last fall at Exove. One was one-on-one with the interviewee and our amazing marketing person. There were a few of us who got to shoot some quick videos on various topics for our social media. I don't expect anyone to be surprised that my videos were about accessibility. :)

The other videos were done with our partner Norders, and the setup was maybe ever so slightly more professional. I was suggested a video concept of a recipe book, and then the plan was to have two videos. From there on, I had some time to think about what might work as a video and then have a sparring session with our partner as well as our marketing person. The topics we decided on were accessible content and then AI, because it is a hype at the moment. We will see when the AI bubble bursts.

Planning the content

First thing I did was to ensure that I got the recipe book concept right and that I knew what type of things might work. Then I did some initial thinking of what I wanted to say and got some extra support for bouncing ideas around with AI. Once I had a draft version of the script in place, we had the sparring sessions I mentioned earlier. Then I went on to finish the planning of the content.

Preparing for the videos

Once the content was in place, I started doing practice runs of the video content. We had agreed on certain time "limits" - or preferences for the videos, and I wanted to make sure I had both enough content and not too much of it. I have a habit of practising as much as possible to avoid freezes when my brain decides to take a different route than what I had originally planned. This works quite well for me, though it does take some time.

One fun way of practising was to use my trampoline to keep my brain better focused on the content. The small movement helped my brain to not to be as distracted as it would otherwise be.

We decided that I wouldn't write as I talked. I quite quickly noticed that I cannot do both at the same time without either speaking in a weird and slow way or making all sorts of spelling errors. I would use pre-written ingredients, and I really didn't have a plan for them before going to the shoot. That was new for me... usually I wouldn't be able to function with such a big unknown. But for some reason, I felt that well, what happens will happen.

I did have some time before my shoot because I went to the location a bit beforehand with my colleague, who shot their video before me. So while familiarising myself with what was going to happen, I did some quick planning of how I would use the cards.

Shooting the videos

Both my videos were shot on the same day (there were two shooting days). In the scene, there were only a few people: my colleague (who is one of my safe people), our marketing person and a few people from our partner. Well, our partners are experts in this, but still, I was a bit surprised by how kind and supportive they were. I had a really nice time at the video shoot.

I knew that we didn't have a lot of extra time to shoot the videos, so I aimed to get it right at the first try. I succeeded in that quite well! There were some small stumblings here and there, but instead of reshooting, I decided that they are ok. Mistakes do bring some authenticity and show me as a real person instead of a robot.

Seeing the results

Once the videos were edited, we got to see the results before they went live. I always enjoy watching my colleagues in videos; we have so many great performers and speakers at the company. And many of the topics were also really interesting to me, so it was really a win-win!

It's been weirdly ok to watch myself babble along about accessibility. Which is good because I'm going to start shooting videos on my own soon(ish). And because I will need to edit them myself, it's good if I can actually watch the content. But more on that later.

So stay tuned for A11ying with Sanna videos! Though don't expect them to appear in the couple of following months, I'm not that close yet. But in the meantime, you can go check the videos out from Exove's website in Finnish (at the time of writing, the first video is out).  The blog post contains the video and a text version of it. You might also run into some on Exove's social media channels! At least I saw one of my videos just a few days ago.