Planning
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6 min read
How we draw a ground plan for 1,400 seats
Sightlines, aisles, camera risers and the fire marshal: what goes on the first drawing and why.
Every show we build starts as a ground plan: a scaled drawing of the room with the stage, the screens, every row of seats and every piece of equipment that needs floor space. It is the first thing we send, and the one document every vendor works from.
Start with the exits
Before a single chair goes on the drawing, we mark the exits, the fire lanes and the load-in door. The venue's fire marshal will check these first, so we do too. A plan that loses forty seats to an aisle in week five is a plan that started in the wrong place.
Then the sightlines
We draw a line from the last seat to the top of the screen and to the stage floor. If the stage is too low the back rows see shoulders; too high and the front rows look at shoes. For 1,400 seats, 90 centimeters is usually right.
Cameras get a seat too
Camera risers take real floor space and block real sightlines. We place them on the first drawing, not the last, so the stream never costs you a row.
More from the shop floor
What a line-item production budget should include
Eleven lines, one total and no surprises: how to read a production estimate before you sign it.
Eight weeks to a 1,400-seat kickoff: the schedule we used
A venue change in January, doors on March 9. The week-by-week plan that got Northwind Labs there.
Designing a stage for the camera and the room at once
Remote viewers see a frame, not a room. How we draw stages that work for both.
A 30-minute call with a producer. You leave with a budget range for your room size and a straight answer on the timeline.
Show production for company conferences, launches and dinners, built in our own shop in Nashville.
Pavilion