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:
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)