Guy Williams as Will Cartwright, seen in five episodes during the fifth season. |
The below set is off a Republic Pictures video master, and the above set, with Guy Williams, is off the original Republic Pictures 16 mm prints, from 1973. |
The new opening credits made for the third season would be the ones
that would be the most memorable, filmed at Bourne's Meadow at Lake
Tahoe, Nevada in June of 1961. All four of the actors on horseback
would be filmed riding down the meadow, come to a mid-way halt over the
course of several takes on film. The close-ups of all 4 cast members were filmed at Paramount on the
soundstage, with a large piece of black felt behind each one of them and
filmed. Opticians mask out
everything on the filmed close-ups except the actors.
The final step is
to the optical house where the actor's names are painted on the film, the
close-ups filmed at the soundstage are sandwiched onto the filmed meadow
standing empty and optically printed together for a final print. The
soundtrack is added later on at the optical house as well. In the
technical terminology, it's called a "composite" of how motion picture
film is used for certain scenes in film and television. These opening
scenes were seen from season three through the end of season six of the
series.
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