Bambi II Commentary

The audio commentary for Bambi II is a fan-fiction thing to make. It would've appeared on Bambi II: 2-Disc Forest Collector's Edition DVD (2006) and the 2011/2017 Blu-Ray release of the film.

Discription
Bambi II commentary with Director/Writer Brian Pimental, Actor Patrick Stewart, and Music Composer Bruce Broughton.

Transcript

 * BRIAN PIMENTAL: Hi, I'm Brian Pimental. I'm the director and writer of Bambi II.
 * PATRICK STEWART: I'm Patrick Stewart, and I voice the Great Prince of the Forest in the midquel.
 * BRUCE BROUGHTON: And I'm Bruce Broughton, the music composer of the film. And welcome to this delightful audio commentary on Bambi II.
 * PIMENTAL: I wanted to make this movie to show how Bambi befriends the Great Prince and turns into a young adult deer that we see in the first Bambi movie. Oddly enough, in just a couple of moments, we all actually get to experience some Deja vu in the forest. Trust me, you're probably going to be seeing the first Bambi here in this movie when it's taking place right after Bambi's mother dies. And, and the two voice actors from the original are recycled here.
 * Bambi: Moth- (Gasps)
 * The Great Prince: Your mother can't be with you anymore.
 * STEWART: The first two lines are actually taken from the first movie when Bambi found out that his mother had died. Kind of shocking to you guys, isn't it?
 * (STEWART AND PIMENTAL LAUGH)
 * BROUGHTON: Surprisingly enough, this is almost the exact same thing that happened in Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure, where the crew of that movie used the one of the scenes from Lady and the Tramp 1 for the opening scene of that movie. And, and we used the scene from Bambi 1 where Bambi finds that his mother was killed for the opening scene of this movie.
 * PIMENTAL: Actually, the opening was going to be different with Bambi's mother dying on-screen, in addition to the appearance of Man, and the Great Prince actually referring to Bambi as his son right before leaving to go to his den, and the whole movie started after that point, but due to high production costs, and because we wanted to keep both the cause of the death of Bambi's mother and the fact that he is his father's son a secret, not only did we had to shorten it, but also change it into the Great Prince's talk with Friend Owl, as y-you'll see in this upcoming scene right, right here in your living room.
 * BROUGHTON: Speaking of which, here's Friend Owl again! To be fair, though, he was voiced by Will Wright in the original, but since he passed away many years before this midquel came into being, he's voiced by Keith Ferguson here in the midquel.
 * PIMENTAL: He actually thought he'd be perfect for voicing Friend Owl in the midquel, as when we called him to voice the character after we received a couple of "no" answers, he said yes.
 * STEWART: The Great Prince was actually my first character that I finally voiced in a Disney movie after turning down the roles of several characters in several of Disney's animated films including King Triton, Cogsworth, Jafar, Zazu, Governor Ratcliffe and Zeus. Heck, I'm no stranger to animated movies, either, as I previously voiced King Goobot in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and Mr. Woolensworth in Chicken Little, but those movies were computer-animated, and this was done with mostly 2D animation, so I'm really excited to finally voice a character in an English 2D-animated film.
 * PIMENTAL: Now comes the start of the major plot point of the midquel where the Great Prince finds out that he has to look over his son, Bambi, until Spring arrives. We knew we just had to go in this direction because the 2nd half of the original 1942 movie had Bambi and his friends in their young adulthood states, and we wanted to explain how Bambi got his antlers and lost his wheat spots in the first place when we first see him as a stag.
 * STEWART: In the actual world, stags usually shed their antlers during the winter season. But in the first Bambi movie and the midquel, the Great Prince doesn't do that for some reason. The reason for making that decision is to justify him and his duties of watching over the forest no matter what season it is.
 * PIMENTAL: Also, the stag and doe usually mate during the Spring season, so we thought it would be the perfect season for the Great Prince to find a suitable doe for Bambi after his mother was killed by hunters. It was... basically was a really wise decision to make. There, I said it. A, a really wise decision.
 * (STEWART CHUCKLES)
 * (Music starts)
 * PIMENTAL: Some of the painted backgrounds that you'll see in the movie are actually the exact same ones that were used in the first movie since the animators took those paintings and put them through their computers to create a clearer image of them. We even reused some parts of the scans in many of the new backgrounds that were, uhh... created using the "Corel Photo Paint" software to make them look beautiful.
 * BROUGHTON: The opening song, "There is Life", is performed by Alison Krauss, a famous singer. We decided to use this as the opening song of the midquel to show that even during the winter season, there are still living things that live in the forest, even, e-even the inanimate objects as well. We've also done it to show the starting relationship between Bambi and the Great Prince of the Forest at the beginning of the movie.
 * PIMENTAL: Some of the lighting effects are actually done on the computers to give a sense of feel that a new day is dawning in the wintery forest.
 * STEWART: Most of the forest animals that you're seeing are from the original Bambi movie from 1942 who appear in a variety of scenes both in the original and the midquel. Most of the forest animals did return for the midquel, but not some of them, like Mr. Mole. The crew members had to take him out because they decided he probably wouldn't fit in the midquel since he's really hard to animate in the wintery scenes.
 * BROUGHTON: Ironically enough, some of the forest animals that do appear in the midquel d-don't really appear in the original Bambi, either. We just added them in to, to make the forest not only more life-like, but also beautiful for the viewers at the same time.
 * PIMENTAL: To get the emotion of the forest animals the same as before, we would look at drawings done by Walt Disney back when he was working on the original Bambi, and, and then the animators would take a look at them while they're working on the film and animate them to closely resemble the first movie as best as they possibly could.
 * STEWART: The snow and melting ice effects were really tough to animate for the effects team, especially during the frozen waterfall part, because they had to literally go out of their ways to make sure they were accurate to the winter season that's showcased in the first half of this midquel.
 * PIMENTAL: Something you haven't probably noticed by now is that the Great Prince's den has snow on it, as you'll see right here in this shot. And the plant here was a bit hard to work on, since we wanted to cut to Bambi waking up from the water drops that's dropping on his temporary den, but also wanted to keep it altogether as well to make it work.
 * STEWART: The scene with Bambi waking up and finding that things have changed since the night the Great Prince talked to Friend Owl was one of my favorite parts of Bambi II to work on because I felt really special when I recorded this scene after multiple takes. It's... it's just like... wow. It's both beautiful and wonderful.
 * PIMENTAL: In this movie, Bambi is voiced by Alexander Gould, the same person who voiced the titular character in Finding Nemo. He was so excellent at voicing him in that movie, we thought it would be wrong not to have him voice Bambi in the midquel. We knew that he would be perfect for voicing Bambi at a very young age like him.
 * Bambi: I guess was my stomach.
 * STEWART: When the Great Prince appears, the scenery becomes straight and upright to reflect his personality in the midquel. It's to show that he's not really a father at first, but he soon grows attached to his son, Bambi, later in the 2nd half of the film, which is our goal of this movie.
 * BROUGHTON: For animating the many plants in the midquel, the animators studied actual plants to give a feeling of hunger for the deer that you see right here in this scene. This was also done for the original Bambi, too, but that was done just for the beautifulness of the forest. Here, though, even Bambi gets hungry, too, just like the other deer in real life, so this sequence fits perfectly with both his own personality and his food-eating skills.
 * STEWART: Some of the lines in the movie are actually ad-libbed. In fact, we even kept them in the final film just because we basically thought they were great, really great.
 * PIMENTAL: For example, the scene with Bambi getting excited and romping around the Great Prince is actually just Alexander Gould jumping around in excitement while he was recording it with Patrick Stewart. We... we decided on it to be in the final film only because of how great that kid really is while in the recording booth.
 * Bambi: He doesn't?
 * The Great Prince: He certainly does not. A prince maintains control...
 * STEWART: When the Great Prince tells Bambi about the things a... a Prince does and does not do, it's all done for the purpose of making him a lovable character that audiences of all kinds can relate to whenever they're seeing him onscreen whether he's talking, doing something, or just standing there.
 * BROUGHTON: While working on the film, we would all occasionally watch, like, some of the scenes from the 1942 Bambi film, particularly the 1st half. And, and that's where we would get all these ideas that we think should be in the midquel in some form.