I get questions all the time from speakers and wannabe-speakers about the infamous speaker DVD.  I’m beginning to think that somewhere an angel loses its wings every time I answer the question, because the speakers usually look so crestfallen.  So in an effort to save a few angels, here’s the lowdown on the speaker DVD. 

If you want to be a paid speaker and get hired by meeting planners and through speakers bureaus, you must have a speaker DVD.  What does it look like?  Let’s say what it’s not first.  It’s not a series of clips of you on TV shows sounding witty and looking great.  It’s not a hand-held, back-of-the-room, lousy-sound DVD your brother-in-law shoots with his camcorder.  It’s not a film of you talking straight into the camera in a studio (or a hotel room). 

It is a 20- to 30-minute excerpt from a real speech given by you in front of a good audience, in a similar setting to what you’re hoping to get hired to do.  The DVD is done with 2 or 3 cameras, professional sound, good lighting, and audience reaction shots.  The look and feel should be like a presidential news conference, or state of the union address, with most of the camera attention on you, but with occasional cutaways to the audience.  That’s why you need the second camera – to catch the question, the laugh, the audience clearly engaged in your brilliant insights. 

The camera shouldn’t simply focus on your head and shoulders and leave it there for the 20 -30 minutes.  That’s what your brother in law would do, and it looks bush league.  Instead, it should close in occasionally, but stay wide, or at a 3/4 shot most of the time.  We want a sense of the room, and the magnitude of the occasion.  But no waiters walking in front of the cameras!  And, in spite of the fact that most highly paid speeches are given in ballrooms to people sitting at rounds, (a format that is deadly dull and which I particularly loathe), what shows up best is the auditorium style.  That’s because rounds always make the room look empty and the crowd sparse. 

Of course, the hard thing about all this is that if you haven't yet been hired to give these kinds of speeches, how do you get a DVD of one?  It’s a Catch-22. 

The good news is that we’ve worked out a solution.  Our Public Words Speaker Forum 2010 conference has a couple of slots left on Day Two for speakers who want to record their speeches and get a DVD.  We’ll got a two-camera film crew on hand, with professional sound, good lighting, and an audience, and we’ll edit the DVD for you afterward to the specs that work best for meeting planners and speakers bureaus.  All you have to do is show up with a great speech.  Register here so no more angels have to lose their wings!