On a warm night this past June, Disney superstar Corbin Bleu is preparing to shoot a complicated prom scene for the eagerly anticipated "High School Musical 3: Senior Year," the first of the franchise's movies that will be released in theaters. And the 19-year-old is no stranger to the end-of-school tradition.

"I've been to nine proms," Bleu sheepishly admits. "I've had prom on the Queen Mary, prom in a barn, prom in South Dakota and Chicago and L.A. and everywhere. Every one has been completely different, from extremely strict and rigid Catholic school with nuns putting a ruler between the two of you, to completely insane at an arts high school where kids dressed in the craziest outfits you can think of."

But, like "High School Musical," that period of Bleu's life is pretty much over (we hope). With this film expected to be the last incarnation featuring the original cast, the actor/singer is looking forward to moving on from portraying the basketball-playing Chad and focusing on his promising music career. Currently finishing up his second album, he hopes to enlarge his fan base after having two top 20 hits from the first two "High School Musical" soundtracks, "Push It to the Limit" and "What Time Is It?" Bleu's current fans will also find him on tour with "HSM3" co-star Vanessa Hudgens this summer. He says, "We go onstage at different times with different sets, but I think we want to do a song together and sing together. It should be fun, like old times."

As for the movie's new songs, one of Bleu's favorites, and co-star Zac Efron's as well, is "Boys Are Back."

He notes, "This was the first time Zac and I really got to dance with one another with partner dancing. It was awesome, really good. I'm very impressed with him, too. He's come a long way."

According to Bleu, the sequence created quite a buzz on the set.

"The number itself is like nothing anyone's seen before," Bleu says. "We're dancing on top of cars in this junkyard, dirt flying everywhere; it's this real macho number. We're rolling on tires, just really innovative things that were so creative."

(Spoilers ahead.)

The night before we spoke, Bleu and his cast mates filmed the final scene of the movie, and it was an emotional moment for all.

"We had one section where we walk past a curtain and we turn around and we all put our hands up and that's the end," Bleu recalls. "We looked at the playback, and it's this shot of a curtain closing on us with our backs turned and our hands up, and we looked at each other, and it really was a sad moment. We all group hugged. Lots of people were crying."

Bleu continues, "I'm about to be 20. Obviously, I'm not that old at all. I'm still really young, but it was like a real graduation. It's just crazy how this movie mimics real life."

"High School Musical 3: Senior Year" opens nationwide on Oct. 24.

Also: Features archive