Talks about his "Making the Band" experience

June 22, 2000

When Bryan Chan went to an audition for a new band that was being created by Lou Perlman, he had no way of knowing that his life would change forever. One of eight young men selected from a pool of thousands, Bryan spent the next several months in Florida trying to make the band, all the while having his every move filmed by a camera crew for a national television show. In the end, Bryan didn’t make the band, but with all of his talent and charisma, it’s a sure bet that you’ll be seeing him around for some time to come!

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CheckOut.com: Welcome to a chat with Bryan Chan, one of the stars of ABC's "Making the Band," which airs on Friday nights from 9-10PM. . Bryan was selected from over 1,800 aspiring performers to join the cast of this behind the scenes look at the making of a pop group. . The show is produced by Lou Perlman, founder of Trans Continental Records and creator of the hit bands The Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and LFO. Welcome, Bryan!

Bryan Chan: Hello, everyone. Thanks for tunin' in, and it's great to be here. Tune in this Friday, and you certainly won't be disappointed. The whole season has kind of worked itself up to this week where the cut will actually be made from 8 to 5.

Glad2CU2948: How did you make your decision to try out for the show?

Bryan Chan: On a whim an old roommate of mine called to let me know that he saw an advertisement on MTV that someone was putting together the next pop male band and he told me to check out the website, which I did, and it just happened that auditions were going on that same day in Los Angeles. So, I went to the Hard Rock Cafe and weaseled my way into an

Audition That Had Been Going On Since 9: 00AM, and it was 1:30 in the afternoon. The rest is history.

Jacobsgrl: Was recording "All for Love" your first time in a recording studio?

Bryan Chan: I had done some recording with a gospel choir in college and we had produced two different albums. But it was absolutely nothing compared to the studio facilities and the recording producers that we worked with for "All for Love". There was a million-dollar facility that we were working in versus the school equipment that I was used to working with.

OceanSerenity: It's hard to know each person individually, but you have that opportunity. What can you tell us about each member of the group?

Bryan Chan: I think what is unfortunate about this type of programming is that you take hundreds of hours of tape and have to condense it into a 22-minute episode per week. Unfortunately, what that does is limit the characters to being one- dimensional characters in a story. Paul unfortunately comes across as this flirtatious womanizer, when in fact at the same time what people don't see is that he is probably one of the wittiest people out of the 8 of us and is actually really intelligent as well. Trevor has a really sensitive side that I think comes across on the show. But there are times that Trevor was just like the obnoxious little brother that you couldn't shut up if you wanted to. I think Jacob comes across as very focused and very outspoken, but I think there is a soft side to Jacob that most people only experience if you are with him one on one. Eric has this drive and this passion and he wants this so bad that he can taste it, but there are times when he was the one least willing to work for it and times that he would focus more on himself instead of thinking of the group first. Ashley is just the baby of the group and even for the guys that were just one or two years older than him, they just had so much more experience with a lot of different things and it was so new to Ashley that he had to take in a lot at one time. And that put a lot of strain on the relationship with his girlfriend at home. Mike is a very driven person who is very focused and dedicated to the project. But they don't show a lot of that on the show. And I think one thing that doesn't get shown enough is how quickly he picked things up. And although he might have come into the situation not having much dance experience, he was amazing when it came to learning something and being able to perform it the next day. I feel very fortunate that I know these guys as their well-rounded personalities and not just what people watch on the show, and when people watch the show they should always keep that in mind.

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