How Jack Rhodes Filmed a Self-Funded Magic Special

Long-time One Ahead readers will remember my articles on the transition from being a nuclear engineer to a full-time magician and YouTuber.

Oh my days, that feels like a long time ago. Although not so long ago that it’s not still relevant enough to make a joke out of in my new special:

Well, we're doing it again. I say ‘we’, you’re not doing a thing here, let’s be honest.

See, I'm releasing a magic special. Or a comedy magic special if you prefer. 

And I’m producing and releasing it independently. 

When this goes live, you’ll already be able to watch the special for free on YouTube.

Written, performed, directed, and edited by Jack Rhodes!

That’s not me bragging, by the way. I mean, it sort of is. But the fact of the matter is, this whole project hasn’t exactly been plain sailing. I’m really happy with the final result, super proud of it in fact, but holy smokes was it a journey.

The people at One Ahead kindly asked me to put pen to paper (read: fingers to iPad) and share how I put together my independently produced magic special.

After reading this, I hope you'll want to do it too. Or at least think about it…

Let's start with what didn't work.

We got the show filmed twice. There’s no big Netflix money behind it; the budget for the special is being covered by some of the profit I made from touring the show.

The show, by the way, is my debut comedy magic live show ‘Jack Rhodes: Part-Time Wizard, Full-Time Moron’ that toured the UK from January to March 2026, and I had two of the tour dates lined up to be filmed. 

The first was in Bristol, halfway through the tour. The second was in London, the final date of the tour, at the Leicester Square Theatre. In my head, it was this London show that was always going to be the special. 

It's a beautiful room; an iconic comedy venue, a 400-seat theatre, it's in London, the West End, what more could you want?

Enter the first problem. Not a problem with the show. The show went great; in fact, it was one of the best of the tour. Great audience, standing ovation, the works.

The problem was in the recording itself. Upon getting the footage back, it became apparent that none of the audio of the show was usable. Little did I know that someone had accidentally spilt a pint of beer onto the sound desk at the back of the room and inadvertently corrupted all of the audio files. Ffs.

We had mics set up all around the room; capturing the audience, my voice, the media and everything in between. Not a single audio file was usable. An entire show recording (the final date of the tour!) ruined. 

I still have the hard drive here with all that glorious video footage in an iconic venue. Sat, staring at me. Gloating because it’ll never see the light of day.

Rule number one in the content game is ‘the audience will forgive bad video quality, they won’t forgive bad audio quality’. 

In fact, if you’ll recall, I even wrote in my last One Ahead article (May 2024) that:

Oh, how old-me would be laughing right now…

Here’s the good news. The first show I recorded in Bristol was phenomenal. Like, the-best-show-I’ve-ever-done phenomenal. Although the London show might’ve ended up looking better, I knew deep down that the Bristol show was going to be hard to top.

There was a special feeling in the room. I could feel it the moment I stepped on stage. I can't say everything about that night went smoothly, either (more on this later). But at least I had a recording, and I could still put together the special.

The very first time that I did a version of this show, I filmed it.

That was back in December 2024. I filmed it in my hometown, in a 500-seat theatre, with something like 15 GoPro cameras. 

That wasn’t to release anywhere — it was just for my own reference, although it did end up helping us book the show in theatres around the UK. I set up all these different angles so I could figure out which shots and angles would work best for when it came to actually filming the special with bigger and better cameras.

When we recorded the special in Bristol (a 300-seat theatre), we had a seven-camera setup. I brought three of my own cameras, and I hired two cameramen who brought four more. After watching the special, you’d be inclined to think that there were more than two cameramen there on the night. But I’d like to put that down to good planning.

Speaking of good planning, let’s talk about the things I screwed up due to bad planning. 

I knew where I wanted each camera, but I never factored in where the cameras (and camera operators) were physically going to be placed. It turns out, you actually need to allocate seats for cameras and operators given that they are going to be operating cameras mainly from where the audience is sitting. Who’d have known?

So come the day of the races, we're at the venue, and we're waiting to see which seats are not getting filled so we know where we can set the cameras up. But the show had sold out. Every last ticket… gone. 

Any other day, that would be great news. But the one day I wanted the show not to sell out, it only went and sold out, didn’t it? That’s ‘first-world problems’ on steroids.

Suddenly, my carefully planned camera angles are not looking so carefully planned. The camera guys are setting up wherever they can. One at the back of the room and one blocking the fire exit. Not ideal.