Sizzle Reel
What is a Speaker’s Sizzle Reel and Why do you Need One?
Many event organizers and meeting planners, including TED and TEDx organizers, will ask you for a video of you speaking on stage. In the industry, this is called a Speaker’s Sizzle Reel. You can find some examples here on this page. A speaker’s sizzle reel is a highly edited professional-grade video that runs between 3-6 minutes and shows clips of you performing on stage as a public speaking professional.
Imagine a movie trailer of you speaking on stage
The sizzle reel will also include images of your book cover if you are an author, client testimonials of your speaking skills, and clips from any of your local or national media appearances. The most important element for your speaker’s sizzle reel is to demonstrate that you are a dynamic speaker who can energize your audience with your message. You will want to select the boldest and most engaging parts of your talk. If you give a 90-minute keynote, you only need 2 minutes of clips from this entire speech, to showcase you.
Sizzle reels are probably the most challenging marketing element for a keynote speaker to create. Often the cameras are not rolling at the events where you are speaking. If the cameras are rolling, they are not well positioned, and you are speaking on a stage far off in the distance of the frame, the lighting is frequently very low, the sound is of poor quality, and sometimes even inaudible. There can be a lot of background noise when videos are captured at speaking events and it does positively not represent your skills as a speaker when all you can hear is forks on plates, and people whispering to each other about other topics, as you are speaking. Add to this pursuit, the fact that you only speak a few times a year, and if the video is not useable, you must wait months to be invited to speak at a new event, to even hope to capture a video of you speaking. Only to face more of the same issues and challenges.
Be anything but predictable.
Event organizers do not like outside production crews to be on-location, filming you independently, who will interfere with their event. You can quickly see the challenges of producing a high-quality speaker’s sizzle reel that showcases you as a charismatic and polished messenger.
Additionally, your on-camera keynote talk must reflect your CURRENT speaking topics and portray the keynote speeches that you will be hired to deliver at an upcoming event. A talk you delivered 3, 5, or even 10 years ago will hurt your chances of being booked as a paid speaker because your materials are dated. Speaker’s sizzle reels have a shelf life, and they must be continually updated with new materials. This is a new obstacle, after covid, because many speakers were not able to get on a live stage and zoom clips are not as persuasive.
There are many speakers out there without a speaking video, who are frustrated because they are not invited to more stages, especially the paid stages
This is something that can easily be resolved by joining us for RTS Shout From Your Soul Speaking and Media Studio Week and TEDx Speaker training. Where you step into our state-of-the-art television studio and create a TED-style talk, which is 18 minutes of your current material, to bring your video collateral up to the level you need to jumpstart your speaking career. Many of our speakers have performed in our TV studio and 30 days later were invited to perform a real TEDx Talk or see their speaking fees increase 5 times or even 10 times per stage appearance.
