Production
Filming of the original pilot for the series took place in California. After the ABC network picked it up, the series production moved to Tucson, Arizona, with filming in "Mescal", a western-themed movie town operated by Old Tucson Studios.
Before the series premiere, producers of the 1988 film Young Guns filed a lawsuit against ABC and the series producers, claiming the series title combined with its plot infringed on their trademark.
In the second season, Don Franklin joined the cast to portray the character Noah Dixon. In doing so, he became the third African-American actor to hold a starring role in a television western – after Raymond St. Jacques who had co-starred on the final season of Rawhide as cattle drover Simon Blake (1965) and Otis Young who co-starred with Don Murray on the short-lived (1968–69) TV series The Outcasts. Having never ridden a horse before, Franklin was sent to "Cowboy Camp" for 3–4 days where he learned how to mount and dismount, and the basics of riding. Desiring to also work behind the cameras, Franklin talked with producers about writing and directing an episode for the series. In an interview, he noted that the series producers were very receptive and was regularly encouraging the cast to not only make suggestions, but also follow through with them. When the cast noted that they didn't like the series becoming a "guest-villain-of-the-week", it was changed to refocus back on the individual characters and their relationships with each other. Franklin himself also encouraged that more black characters be included in the series.
Read more about this topic: The Young Riders
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)