Forbes: New Technology Could Bring More Transparency To Broadway Seating

[MezzA101]

Posted: 8/12/24 at 6:54am

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marchershberg/2024/08/12/new-technology-could-bring-more-transparency-to-broadway-seating/

[JasonC3]

Posted: 8/12/24 at 7:51am

The essence:

"Preevue, a leading provider of technology that allows theatergoers to get sneak peeks of the views from their seats, could soon become available at more Broadway theaters. 'We are in discussions with a major Broadway theater owner about starting the scanning work,' confirmed its chief executive officer, Ryan Metcalfe.

Founded in 2016, the London-based company uses laser scanning technology and computer-aided design to create three-dimensional digital replicas of theaters. Capturing one million measurements as small as an inch every second, Preevue has scanned more than 65,000 seats in more than 250 theaters around the world, including more than three-fourths of the theaters in London’s West End."

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 8/12/24 at 8:06am

Interesting. Essentially doing what the crowd-sourced View From My Seat does now although probably without the reviews.

I imagine there’ll be a disclaimer with each photo along the lines of “View not inclusive of the woman in front of you who keeps her hair up or the guy who won’t take off his baseball cap.” 

[Plannietink08]

Posted: 8/12/24 at 8:25am

This is available in a lot of UK theatres and honestly it makes the world of difference. 

[Boog2021]

Posted: 8/12/24 at 10:57am

This is probably ATG. The Lyric already has this with this company. The Nederlander and the New Amsterdam also have scans from each seat, so the Nederlanders could also be looking at it. The difference is Preevue is named in the Lyric scans, but no company is named in the Nederlander and New Amsterdam scans.

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 8/12/24 at 11:03am

I see that for the Lyric, it does have a stage mock up, but how quickly would it take into account scenery for a specific show?  Like I'm assuming for a new show when tickets first go on sale, it wouldn't necessarily be able to have all the details of what seats may be obstructed/how obstructed a seat would be, but do they get those images quickly after a show starts, or is it only for long runners like HPCC?

[Boog2021]

Posted: 8/12/24 at 1:25pm

They managed to get one in for Tommy. My guess is they just use the 3D model of the set and put that in the model of the theater (at least as a start, they might do a scan of the set later).