The Standard Magazine

Page 18

WATCH

THE 3 BITS

The 3 Bits follows the erratic lives of the three Bit siblings, Henry, Roman and Madison. Henry is a geeky young gay who desperately wants to have an orgy but has no idea how to get one started. Roman, a shavedheaded lesbian, thinks she wants a quiet life but can’t break away from the money and excitement of her former, drug-dealing self. Then there’s the seemingly straight-laced Madison who wishes she were the love child of Martha Stewart and Mick Jagger. More than anything, she yearns to be famous but also wants a conventional married life with a kid and a high-paying career. The show is the brainchild of the writing/directing team Max Freeman and Margaret Singer, a pair who met in Boston where Margaret was a budding photographer and Max was working on a PhD in literature at Harvard. What both really wanted, though, was to make movies. So Margaret set down her lens and Max dropped out of his program, and the duo took a month off to write a feature-length script. Upon completion, they were confident someone would produce the film because it was, well, bad-ass. However, two years later, with the screenplay still stuffed under a mattress, they realized

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that with zero training in film and no industry connections, they were never going to sell the script. They could either go to film school or start making movies themselves. THE 3 BITS is their first go at movie-making and it has become part of a new revolution of television where it’s no longer only a question of where viewers can watch the show (on computer or TV) but how they watch it. “Way back in the nineties, you could only watch a television show when it was on the air,” says Singer. “Then there was TiVo, where you could tape the show and watch it at your leisure. Now, thanks to Netflix and Apple TV, people can binge-view shows and watch an entire season in one sitting.” THE 3 BITS takes viewer control even further. While most series still unroll from pilot to finale, THE 3 BITS lets viewers choose how to experience its world. Shot from the perspectives of each of the siblings, THE 3 BITS is, in effect, three shows that unroll side by side. If a viewer wants to watch Henry’s episodes and not Madison’s, that’s fine. Or they can watch only Roman or Madison’s shows. But if they want a panoramic view of the entire Bits family, they can watch all three. The freedom


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