Preevue can help turn your ideas from virtual into reality
Whether it’s visualising different sets on a virtual stage, working out how to fit an existing show into a new venue or checking out the view before buying a ticket, Preevue has got all of your technological services covered
Preevue is one of British theatre’s biggest success stories of the past decade. In eight years, the company has grown from a start-up in a student bedroom into one of the performing arts industry’s leading providers of cutting-edge technological services.
“Preevue’s niche has always been in combining modern technologies and applying them to an industry that traditionally lags behind with them,” says the company’s founder and managing director Ryan Metcalfe. “And things are just exploding for us.”
What does Preevue do? In technical speak, Preevue is a laser scanning and digital twin specialist for arts, events, media and entertainment. In layman’s terms, that means the company uses advanced equipment to scan venues and performance spaces, builds virtual models of them, then provides a range of different accompanying services.
Say a designer wants to play around with different sets on a virtual stage, or a producer wants to quickly work out how to refit an existing show into a new venue on tour, or a customer wants to check out what the view from their seat will be before they buy a ticket. Or perhaps a box office manager wants to plan a successful ticket pricing structure based on those views. All of that – and much, much more – is made possible with Preevue.
“We offer a wide range of services, from design assistance to sight-line analysis, to providing views from seats that can be attached to the box office,” says Metcalfe. “All of it, though, is built around these ridiculously accurate digital representations of venues. They are at the heart of everything we do.”
‘We are expanding into film, television and entertainment, but theatre will always be at the heart of what we do’
The story of Preevue’s founding sounds like something from a Hollywood biopic. Metcalfe taught himself CAD – computer-aided design – as a theatre-obsessed teenager, sharpening his skills by building virtual models of productions he had seen from memory. By 2016, he was a first-year student of technical theatre at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, toying with his work and using the latest VR headsets.
“I realised then that there was a gulf between where the theatre industry was and where other industries like architecture and engineering were,” Metcalfe recalls. “Architects and engineers used this technology all the time, but theatre people were not utilising it to the extent they could have been at all.”
And so Metcalfe set up Preevue and began offering his services to theatre producers around Britain and beyond. Things got pretty crazy pretty quickly, he remembers: “I was halfway through my second year, trying to juggle making a 3D virtual-model of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway and a 60-hour-week degree at Guildhall.”
“I did Monday to Friday at Guildhall, flew to New York, where I spent Saturday and Sunday, then caught the red eye back in time for classes on Monday.”
Unsurprisingly, Metcalfe never completed that course at Guildhall – he dropped out. “It was an amicable divorce,” he laughs of his choice to focus on Preevue full-time.
Fast forward eight years and Preevue now has offices on St Martin’s Lane, a team of full-time employees – plus “an army of freelancers worldwide”, says Metcalfe – as well as a list of clients that includes ATG Entertainment, LW Theatres, Delfont Mackintosh, Sonia Friedman Productions, Disney Theatrical Productions, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House and the Barbican.
The list of shows that Preevue has been part of is no less impressive: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Back to the Future the Musical, Moulin Rouge!, Bat Out of Hell – The Musical, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, My Neighbour Totoro, Come from Away and many more. The company even produced its own acclaimed version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in which stars Sam Tutty, Emily Redpath and Derek Jacobi were filmed separately then edited together on a virtual set afterwards, during lockdown.
“I rarely take a moment to step back, breathe and think about how far Preevue has come,” says Metcalfe.
“I am always thinking about the next thing. There was a nice moment at the ABTT Theatre Show at Alexandra Palace recently, though. I stepped back and looked at the list of clients on the banner above our stand and thought: ‘Holy shit.’”
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Why has Preevue proved so popular with producers? According to Metcalfe, there are several reasons. Firstly, it saves everyone money, as the initial cost of scanning a venue and building a virtual model of it is quickly recouped through savings elsewhere.
Designers no longer have to perform the tricky task of making, fitting and refitting a production in-person: they can do exactly that remotely with Preevue’s virtual models. Box-office managers can optimise their ticketing strategy using Preevue’s seating analysis. Customers can ensure they get the best view for their money.
Throughout the theatremaking and theatregoing process, Preevue saves time and expenditure. Secondly, continues Metcalfe, it is due to Preevue’s positive environmental impact. Preevue’s virtual models allow producers, designers and other theatremakers to work on a production with astonishing accuracy from anywhere. That means no more transatlantic flights, no more unnecessary set building and far fewer carbon emissions.
And thirdly, adds Metcalfe, Preevue’s models simply make things much more efficient. Theatremakers can collaborate remotely with Preevue on hand to provide any technological training or assistance required.
Preevue’s seat-view technology can be seamlessly integrated into box-office software, as it has been with ATG Entertainment and LW Theatres. Scanning a venue and building a virtual model of it only takes a few weeks.
“We arrive with our state-of-the-art equipment and scan the venue in colour, taking billions of measurements,” Metcalfe says.
“That data is then handed to one of our team, who rebuild it into a virtual model. It usually takes between three to eight weeks.”
It is always worth checking to see if Preevue has already visited, though, Metcalfe adds.
“We have built up a huge data library of virtual venues over the past eight years,” Metcalfe says. “It has almost got to the point in which we have run out of venues to scan.”
“Just yesterday, I got an email enquiry from a lighting designer working in the West End,” he adds.
“He wanted a quote for us to scan the venue he was working in. I told him to just ask his producers because we had already scanned and built that venue for them.”
Over the past eight years, Preevue has revolutionised the theatre industry – but this is only the beginning. The company and its practice are moving in exciting new directions.
“In June last year, I spent a few days in Los Angeles, meeting with bosses at all the major film companies, as a fact-finding mission to figure out how this technology could help them,” says Metcalfe.
“The upshot is that we have already scanned studios with Universal and Fox Entertainment, and we have just signed a multi-year deal to be Paramount Pictures’ specialist supplier. That side of things has got pretty bonkers.”
Preevue is at the vanguard of exploring what is possible with this technology, too. Soon, says Metcalfe, we will be able to really witness theatre at home, not by watching a live-streamed performance via a screen but by donning a headset and sitting in a virtual venue. According to Metcalfe, experiences like that will be available later this year.
“We are expanding into film, television and entertainment, but theatre will always be at the heart of what we do,” he continues.
“I am a theatre kid. I always have been. I always will be. And there are some really, really exciting things I want to do within theatre still.”
For more information about Preevue click here
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