Small World Small Talk!
Small World Small Talk was an interactive feature added to World Chorus in 2001-2006
According to some source code that I translated from French (it may not be perfect but it was incredibly hard to find and translate, I can’t even remember the website now):
'Small World Small Talk
The attraction born from a partnership between Disney and France Telecom
The Small World Small Talk attraction is the result of a collaboration between Disney's artistic teams and several research entities of France Telecom, including the Creative Studio, the Small World Small Talk attraction was inaugurated on 2 April 2004, in the France Telecom post show of the It's a Small World attraction at Disneyland Paris park.
A partnership to boost the It's a Small World attraction
On 18 December 2001, Disney and France Telecom signed a partnership agreement giving France Telecom sponsorship rights for the It's a Small World attraction.
Work was in progress between the project team to rebrand France Telecom's image in the post show.
Its renovation and improvement had to take into account both the upheavals of France Telecom's evolution and communications since its conception 10 years ago, and the potential evolutions in the years to come so that it would not quickly become obsolete.
At stake: the way in which the Group and the applications of telecommunications are presented to the millions of visitors to the Park. This is a tough challenge for a sector that is constantly changing!
The first phase consisted of updating the obsolete references presented to the public, to repaint the post show in accordance with the Group's charter and the evolution of public preferences. It soon became clear that it was important to show visitors an innovative image of the Group.
The Creative Studio teams worked with Disney Imagineering to define what would become a new small attraction in the park, evoking the world of telecommunications in the making.
After an analysis of the innovations being developed in France Telecom's laboratories and their potential integration into attraction scenarios conceived by the Disney Imagineering teams, the project team chose Small World Small Talk
This animation allows both young and old visitors to the park to interact in an interactive kiosk by means of avatars. It presents an advanced communication situation in a transparent, simple and fun way.
But a Chat with 3D Disney characters that speak and animate with your own voice, that's the new attraction!
The innovation lies in the integration of facial and body animations in real time within the attraction: that give rhythm to the dialogue and characterise each character, the use of a voice recognition system that extracts the phonemes in real time from the speech signal (visitors' voices) to animate the face and in particular to move the lips (labialisation), a multimodal interface in four languages (English, French, German, Spanish) with user assistance via voice-overs explaining the game, double animated characters by comedians who take you into their into their little world.
The application is presented on two stations, connected within the kiosk with touch screens, which allow the two visitors to interact in real time through an avatar.
The terminal will be in operation until 2006 in the park: to test the technologies proposed by the application in a real context of use, in particular the clone and avatar
The objective for France Telecom RD is twofold: to test the technologies proposed by the application in a real context of use, in particular the clone and avatar technologies for an initial deployment in a general public environment to test new uses in a real-life context in order to prepare the future services proposed by the France Telecom Group.'
The terminals seemed to have a few little phones, having the appearance of a phone box, and seemed to put you in the role of one of the animated characters, or World Chorus kids.
There seemed to be 2 terminals, and they utilised a microphone and animation system, like a lip-sync!
3D models of the characters inside the touch screen kiosks. I don’t know how many characters were available to choose from due to this being the only video I’ve ever found of the working kiosks, but we have Lucky and Julia. I would assume at least the main characters were available, but maybe not their friends on the screens, though I don’t know.
Before World Chorus closed, there was a proposed update that seemed to be along these lines, according to a YouTube comment which I also translated from French.
« I worked at the time in the innovation laboratory of France Telecom on what was to be the V2 of the post show, which has become a bit dusty due to the use cases shown (fax, fixed telephone, etc.). I had worked with Disney Imagineers on a principle of magic mirrors that allowed people to talk to each other from a distance in the room, as if the "magic of telecoms" erased distances, by transforming themselves into a doll from It's a Small World! Unfortunately, the prohibitive cost of the renovation and development required (Disney's teams don't do any favours and it's VERY expensive) got the better of this project, and this post-show was left untouched until the end of sponsorship in 2009. In the meantime, Orange had taken over by sponsoring the attraction at the entrance of the Walt Disney Studio park. An attraction that has also disappeared… »
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