Cheap airbrush DVDs? Do they exist?!?

The answer is yes and no.

Airbrush DVDs are one of the most highly sought after airbrush training tools yet most people are turned off by their really high prices. A good quality DVD can cost you between $60 and $150 … and most people think that is absurd! Myself included.

How is it that producers of these airbrush DVDs can charge so much?

I think it all must be based on history… if you think back, it wasn’t very long ago that producing video was an extremely laborious and expensive task.

There were no fancy digital cameras, there were no easy to use video editing softwares and there certainly was no easy way to “rip” DVDs. All of these tasks were done the “old fashioned way” with film based cameras, editing rooms and dubbing machines.

Because the cost of producing a short instructional film was so high, the producer of the movie would have to invest a lot of money up front and hope that sales of the video would result in at least covering the cost of the production and maybe bring in a small profit.

Once all the costs are in for producing the film, the producer needs to consider how many are actually going to be sold … sadly, airbrushing is not a huge market … the target audience is not very big at all – it’s not like a regular hollywood movie where potentially millions of people will be interested in the movie – we’re talking an audience of approximately 20,000 people (total guesstimate). And not all of those 20,000 people are going to be interested in the video either … at most maybe 5% of that population will buy it … that’s only 1000 copies … and that’s if the video is popular.

What if it only sold 500 copies? What if it only sells 100 copies?

Those are the questions that drive the cost of a video up. Airbrushing is very small target audience and investing in small target audience in always a gamble. To cover off the risk of losing their shirts, instructional airbrush videos HAD to be priced really high to cover the initial filming costs.

In short, back in the day, producing cheap airbrush DVDs was impossible…

But times have changed, haven’t they?

Times have changed. Producing a DVD as opposed to a video is infinitely cheaper. Digital cameras, editing software, over dubbing – these are all things that KIDS can do these days …

… and making a bunch of DVDs? There are companies out there that specialize in mass producing DVDs and making jackets for the them …. and the costs are LOW … in the $5 to $10 per DVD range.

But who even needs a DVD these days? We have things like iTunes and YouTube and Hulu that will stream our content directly to peoples computers.

I think in the near future cheap airbrush DVDs will no longer be sought after because the cost of airbrush instructional videos is going to come WAY down … it just doesn’t make sense to charge as much these days and people are going to realize soon that there is another way to get video to market and make a good profit from it that is much less risky.

That change will be a rocky one

I want to warn you guys that this change, when it does come, is going to be rocky. One of the nice things about high cost production of airbrush instructional video is that the producer wanted to make sure that his production was super high quality and so he (or she) sought out SERIOUS TALENT to star in these films. Craig Fraser, Cross Eyed, Steve Driscoll, Lorenzo Sperlonga … these are people with SKILLS! These are also people who don’t work for free … they need to be paid for the services they provide and so there will still be some cost associated with producing airbrush videos featuring these people.

What will come first, is people, like myself, who are NOT pros, making YouTube videos and sharing them for free.

The free sharing of info is great, but, it is a lot different to learn from a Pro than it is from an enthusiast. Pros know what they are doing, and enthusiasts hope they know what they are doing. It is going to be up to the person watching the videos to decide if the person sharing the information is a valuable resource or not… whereas in the past, if you were chosen to make a video, it was implied that you knew what the heck you were doing.

The new wave of cheap airbrush DVDs is going to be cheap, not only in price, but in the quality of the instruction.

My personal thoughts on this movement

Personally, I am all for it. I think that the learning from the collective is just as valuable as learning from the pros. It might be slower, but it makes for more relationships and friendships and a better airbrush community.

Ok …. what was my point again…. Oh Yeah …. CHEAP AIRBRUSH DVDs!

So what can we do in the meantime… we need to learn and airbrush DVDs are expensive so we need to find some solutions!

Here are my seven ways to get cheap airbrush DVDs:

  • 1. Buy them used! Scour E-bay, Craig’s List, Kijiji for used cheap airbrush DVDs

  • 2. Pool your money! Get some airbrush friends together and pool your money to buy a few DVDs and share them amongst yourselves. Sell them when your done watching them all and reinvest the sales into more DVDs.

  • 3. Rent Them! I am not sure what the producers of these DVDs think about this service as it is not helping their profit margin but …. www.smartflix.com has over 40 cheap airbrush DVDs available for rent. For $9.99!! The service works just like netflix …

  • 4. Start a SWAP GROUP… if your an airbrush artist it is likely that you belong to an airbrush forum … use the forum to get a group of people together to swap airbrush DVDs … yes, there is a bit of risk there … you may never see your DVD again … but it may work out perfectly too. I think it’s worth a try!

  • 5. Buy VHS tapes. Oh the poor people who have warehouses of airbrush videos on VHS and can’t get rid of them! Poor them, great for US! Watch for BLOWOUT sales in airbrush magazines where producers are ditching their old outdated videos!

  • 6. Watch for COMBO deals. For some reason the airbrush industry loves to sell things in packages. You know the deal … “Buy one for $59.99 or get the whole set of 12 DVDs for $139.99″ … just be careful that you consider what your are getting for you money. I did this once with something un-airbrush related and ended up with 12 pieces of crap for $139.99.

  • 7. Lastly… this isn’t really a tip for finding cheap airbrush DVDs but I am adding it anyway. Instead of spending your money on buying DVDs, why not save your money and go take some training! Learning in person is INFINITELY more valuable than learning from a television or computer monitor!

I hope that helps!