So if Popstars wasn't the polished reality competition we'd see on TV now, what was it? To answer that question, we have to jump to the other side of the camera.

Before Popstars, I was mainly editing documentaries.

Quick turnaround, you know, three weeks to edit a documentary, and they were becoming more and more popular subjects.

They started off very much, you know, public service programs about sort of aspects of New Zealand society and quite serious.

But, you know, they were becoming more and more frivolous.

Alvin said, "Oh, we're gonna run out of people [laughs] to make a documentary on."

So when one documentary project was derailed, the logical next step for William was to find something else to make a doco about.

The subject fell over and I had to come up with something to make very quickly, and so the idea of Popstars came out of, you know, my life and working on these reality-type documentaries.