gauchos' own clothing. Demare sent Magaña and Chiola on long horse rides to "weather" their uniforms and accustom the actors to riding. The locals were surprised to encounter two soldiers in antiquated uniforms. Lucas Demare shows up in the film as an extra a few times. The scene in which the town burns had to be done in one take as they could not afford to rebuild it. Demare had the cameramen and the rest of the crew dressed as gauchos or royalist troops so that if they were accidentally included, they would not ruin the shot. While directing this scene, a sudden wind change moved the fire towards Demare himself making him lose his wig and singeing his fake beard and mustache. In another scene, Demare played the part of a Spanish soldier who, being attacked by the gauchos, receives a lance hit through the chest. Magaña tells In another scene where the characters played by Amelia Bence, Petrone and Magaña argue, the latter was supposed to fall down the stairs but doubted his ability to do so. Demare stood at the top of the stairs with his back to it and rolled down, to demonstrate that the scene could be done without undue risk. This was in fact the sequence shown in the movie. A scene where a group of horses ran down a hill with burning branches tied to their tails needed to be filmed from in front, so the crew built a hut made of wood, stones, and rocks in which stood Peruzzi the cameraman, who tells that "At the order of Action! I saw this mass of heads and hooves coming at me at full speed, and did not breath until I saw them open up to the sides of the hut, right in front of me. We had to improvise and replace the lack of technology with smarts, ingenuity and valor." The filming included more than 1,000 actors as extras for the crowd scenes, although only eighty actors had speaking parts. Among the extras there were local gauchos hired by the producers and others provided as laborers by their employer, the Patrón Costa, a wealthy local family. There were also the aforementioned fencing trainer and soldiers lent by the military garrison and two pato players from Buenos Aires, experts falling from horses. As the gauchos did not want to be dressed as Spaniards, military