Director’s Notes

This was my second student film and first ever documentary. In the spring of 2001, my instructor tasked us with creating a five minute documentary short. At first I struggled to find a subject matter that inspired me to tell its story. Living in San Francisco at the time the first idea that came to mind was the history of BART and the people that work it. However, after finding it difficult to get into contact with someone at BART the idea was quickly scrapped.

I started to worry that I wasn't going to find a subject matter in time to meet the project deadline. Then it hit me. A story I always wanted to tell was how my friends and I put together our Backstreet Boys talent show act in High School and this was the perfect format to tell it. I chose to do the film in a similar style to the VH1 “Behind the Music” series. Having very limited time and with one of my friends off at college, I was only able to interview one other member besides myself. Per my instructor's guidelines, I had to also limit my role to just an introduction at the beginning of the film to set the story up. Looking back, if I would remake this film I would have included interviews with more of the members of the group and have it fit more in line with the format of its sequels.