Nokia Technologies continues to expand its Hollywood client list with its $60,000 Ozo professional virtual reality camera. The company has worked with studios such as 20th Century Fox, which helped design the camera, and Walt Disney Pictures, which recently signed a multi-year deal with Nokia to provide the equipment and VR technologies to support the creation of special VR content.

Livestreaming is the latest addition to the camera’s capabilities. Nokia demonstrated this technology at the May 23rd red carpet premiere of Disney’s Alice Through the Looking Glass at the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles. Pink sang a livestreamed performance to kick off the premiere, which fans could watch on YouTube 360.

Paul Melin, head of presence capture at Nokia Technologies, talks about the evolving virtual reality livestreaming business in this exclusive interview.

How has your Disney deal been progressing?

We have a three-year deal to collaborate on VR experiences with their properties. The latest event was the premiere of Alice Through the Looking Glass. We had both a 360 degree red carpet experience, but also a concert that Pink performed that was captured with three Ozos and livestreamed in 360 degrees to YouTube 360. It was a proof-of-concept of the capabilities for direct-to-consumer livestreamed content on existing social media channels, which is something our customers want.

How quickly were you able to deliver the taped 360-degree content?

We did a rapid turnaround of the concert and we had the full 3D concert in VR with special audio at the after party later that evening.

We have a real-time stitching solution that allows us to livestream VR, which we demonstrated at NAB (National Association of Broadcasters). We had our own booth on the show floor and a stage in front of the NAB hall. We had on-going performances captured with three Ozo cameras that were sent to our booth at the conference and shared with our partners.

How did you work with Disney on The Jungle Book?

There were a few Jungle Book VR projects. Some were computer-generated, but Disney’s The Jungle Book Experience used our Ozo cameras to deliver interviews with actors and directors, and then we had one camera set up on the red carpet of the film. Disney promoted these videos across its social media and on Facebook 360.

Is there any limitation to the amount of cameras you use on a red carpet or at an event?

The Alice experience was more extensive with the three cameras. We only used one camera on The Jungle Book. We were at another event with seven Ozo cameras recently. The number of cameras is not the limitation.

How do you see your cameras being used by Disney and other studios moving forward?

There’s tremendous demand for red carpet coverage, so we can enable all of our customers to do the same type of livestreamed capture. The experience is great for customers. After these first experiments, we’re moving ahead with the software development to make 360-degree livestreaming broadly available in Q3 of this year. But we’ll continue working with selected customers at multiple events to make these live experiences possible right now.

How else do you see this livestreaming being used outside of red carpets?

There’s a lot of demand for live experiences in sports, music, and news. We will be running livestreaming tests in all of those segments in the near future.

How are you seeing early customers use the Ozo cameras?

There’s a great amount of experimentation going on. One of our customers has been shooting lots of nature and documentary content. One of the key benefits of the VR experience is taking cameras to places that are difficult to experience otherwise.

There’s a lot of experimentation with narrative in entertainment experiences. In many cases, it merges gaming and CGI and 360-degree video. It’s evolving quickly and we’re seeing non-linear and hybrid experiences where the VR content can be experienced as part of the broader entertainment experience.

How has distribution of the cameras been expanding?

We have reseller channels in multiple countries opening up. The Pioneer Program has allowed customers who are willing to share some of their content with us to get access to Ozos at a favorable price ($15,000 off retail). We’ve had dozens of applications for this program.

How does this program work?

The terms of the Pioneer Program on our website. The key is that if the company agrees to give us structured feedback in using the Ozo and they share with us one minute of content that we can use to engage with the community, they’ll get a discounted price.

What type of demand are you seeing from brands and advertising in VR?

We’ve seen great demand from the advertising and brand experience sector. A lot of early experiences by Hollywood studios are being funded from the marketing department because the audience is interested in this emerging technology. VR experiences can drive engagement and excitement around a film or a product or a store. The retail and brand ad experiences are among the most active sub-segments we’ve seen to date.

What impact do you see the launches of Sony PlayStation VR and Google Daydream later this year having on the ecosystem?

Google has been an early believer in VR, and the more investment we see from major companies like Sony, Google, and Facebook, the quicker we can evolve the industry.

What role do you see mobile VR playing in this landscape moving forward?

Mobile is definitey a big target for most of our customers. On mobile, because of the limitations of positional tracking as a gaming platform, some of our customers see video being even more important than for the home console.

How do you see the length of VR content evolving?

Most of the VR content today is short-form, which is very understandable given the state of the market in terms of user experiences. A lot of the short-form content is being integrated as part of broader experiences, where you may not be in 360-degree video for a long time, but you’ll pop in and pop out. It remains to be seen what the final length will be. But early research is that people can lose track of time in VR, promising for long-term usage of new media.