![]() Drawn to Nature is an interesting part of this making-of, because it covers how Disney animators actually studied real animals to make the animals more realistic. Current Disney animation talent, plus Pixar's John Lasseter, film and animation historians and a few surviving members of Walt's crew all discuss the making of the film. It kicks things off with the 53-minute The Making of Bambi: A Prince is Born. The Backstage Disney section has the good stuff. The eventual fate of all nitrate-based films. I'm sure it's fine for kids but I wasn't interested. There are a number of games but quite frankly, I have bigger fish to fry than play these games. Both were winter scenes, one of which featured Bambi seeing snow for the first time. On to disc two, there are two deleted scenes in basic pencil sketch. There are sneak peeks for other Disney titles, like Disney's Princess DVDs, the new Studio Ghibli sets, and the JoJo's Circus discs coming this spring. Disc one also has trailers for Cinderella, Chicken Little, Bambi and the Great Prince of the Forest and Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch. It's infinitely more insightful than any commentary track and I hope it's done more often. Walt also planned to show the mother dropping to the ground after the gunshot, but that, too, was nixed in the meeting. Walt was originally going to show the hunter in shadow, but Story Director Perce Pearce suggested not showing man, making him more like an element or force of nature. Among the things you hear them say is that they started planning the music right along with the movie, because they didn't have any music ready for Pinocchio and it made things difficult for them. The notes were boiled down (since the meetings took place over many hours) and we are able to follow the film, thanks to footage from the movie, while listening to voice actors in place of Walt and his crew tossing around ideas. At every creative meeting for the making of the film, Walt Disney had a stenographer taking notes. Inside Walt's Story Meetings is a 70-minute segment, introduced by Patrick Stewart. There is no guest commentary, but we get something far, far better on disc one. The interlacing monster that attacks so many full frame animated titles is nowhere to be seen here. ![]() The print is now bright, vivid and free of flicker, a common problem in old films, and without a single blemish. Colors are deep, rich and solid and free of any bleed. There's a nice segment in the extras on the work done to restore the film, too. ![]() Presented in 1.33:1 full screen video, Bambi has been restored to a glory not even Walt and company could match in the 1940s, thanks to wizard of restoration himself, John Lowry. Score: 10 out of 10 The Video The first person who complains the film isn't in widescreen gets smacked. More than that, the film's cycles of life, birth, maturity, death and rebirth, are presented without it being drilled into your head with contrived songs. Adults will laugh at Thumper saying the wrong thing aloud and his mother having to correct him. But there is depth under it that gives the film impact. On the surface, Bambi is perfect for children with its innocence and sweetness. ![]() It's just not as grandiose as Rafiki holding up the cub. Another similarity the two films share is the opening, where all the forest animals gather to see the newborn "prince" of the forest. Like The Lion King, Bambi deals with the cycles of life. It was entirely the other way around for Simba. Bambi learns the truth from his father, sheds one tear, and moves on. The big difference is that in Bambi, we never see his mother drop after the gunshot, never see a body. They even pitched it internally as " Bambi in Africa." Some scenes and shots are borrowed right from Bambi, while others are distinctly different. Modern Disney took a lot of cues from Classic Disney in making The Lion King. Fifty years later Disney animators were still doing it as a room full of artists sat shifting nervously in their seats while a huge male lion sat in the front of the room as they worked on The Lion King. Both movies featured deer, but starting with Bambi, Walt would bring in the live animals, animal trainers, skeletons and whatnot so his animators could learn how to draw a proper woodland creature. Look at the backgrounds and how they moved. Compare it to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, released just a few years earlier. Bambi would be the last film from Disney's early days and serve as the bridge to more complex stories with far more complex animation.
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