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We attended this event last night, and we had a great time. The host was Leonard Maltin, who started off the evening talking about the film and the efforts at restoration. Then he introduced two members of the restoration team, Theo Gluck and Steve Poehlein, who did a presentation explaining the process of how the restoration was done. They said that normally, prints are struck from a third or even fourth generation master. However, they were able to start from the original negatives of the film with this restoration. They talked a bit about the entire process and then showed a short clip (the one where all the animals are going to see Bambi shortly after he was born) in three forms: first was the normal presentation of the film, second was the original negative version of the film, and third was the final restored version. It was really amazing to see. The new version is pristine and beautiful, with clarity and gorgeous colors, and the soundtrack is clear.
After the presentation, they showed the film, which is in digital form. After that, they had a panel discussion hosted by Maltin that included four guests: Ollie Johnston, Peter Behn (voice of young Thumper), Cammie King (voice of young Faline) and animator Andreas Deja (who has worked on numerous Disney animated films). Peter's recordings were done while he was between the ages of 4 and 6, and Cammie was about the same age, so neither remembers too much specifically about the experience. Ollie talked about how his goal is always to make the characters come to life, to treat them as living beings, and Andreas made a good point about not animating the characters per se but internalizing the characters and letting them come out and show you how they should be animated. Ollie talked a bit about Frank Thomas as well and his contributions, and Leonard Maltin made a comment about how Ollie always deflects credit to his partner but that he deserved a lot of credit too. Listening to Ollie, it made me think that we need to add some more books to our collection, because I want to hear more of his stories about what it was like to work on these pictures. In the audience, there were many members of the restoration team in attendance as well as the original art designer on the film.
I always think it's interesting to see the disparate people who come to these kinds of events. The age range itself ran from young children there with their parents to people probably in their 60s and 70s and older, all to see a 60+ year old animated film. The theatre was fairly crowded. It's been many years since I've seen a film in that theatre, but I was reminded last night what a great venue it is.
Currently on display in the downstairs lobby of the theatre is an exhibit of posters from animated films. We walked around and looked at those for a while. Also on display was original artwork (pencil drawings, water colors, cels) from "Bambi", and those were great to look at as well.
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