Jam - by Pete Barry

[Pete Barry]

Jam Poster.jpg
Jam
Ray's stuck in traffic, not going anywhere - until the voices start coming out of his radio.

[Pete Barry]

I'm new to this, so tell me if I'm doing anything wrong.

[themightyshrub]

I'll be honest, I was hoping for a story about jam, until I saw your poster. And then remember that for some reason best kept to themselves, Americans call jam 'jelly'

[themightyshrub]

Also, good luck! Don't worry about being new, everybody is new at some point.

[Chris_Keaton]

Looks good, welcome to the club.

[alex whitmer]

I'll be honest, I was hoping for a story about jam, until I saw your poster. And then remember that for some reason best kept to themselves, Americans call jam 'jelly'

Only the Americans who don't know the difference (don't have the actual number on me right now!). They can buy jam, jelly, preserves, or marmalade in their friendly, local grocery (actually I think the friendly grocers have all been run out of town, and replaced by mega markets). I'm partial to grape jam, if anyone cares.

Yeah, a story about jam. I once knew a fly who was trapped in a jar of jam for several hours.

[themightyshrub]

See if you can get hold of apple and blackberry jam. It'll change your life.

[Zxander34]

This sounds pretty cool. Looking forward to it.

[DarkElastic]

Hi Pete,

Thanks for the read.

Good:
Good idea.
I liked the idea of the old radio tuning into the mobile phones.
I loved the anti-hollywood ending and the detonation.
I liked the lady yellow underwear bit...

Not so Good:
The idea of the old radio tuning into phone conversations was good, butg then it got complicated with the military and people trying to shoot him, and some how knowing he was able to hear them...
You don't need the pffft sound. Tell us the gun is silenced.
This seems a bigger idea squashed into 5 pages.

Overall, a good story. I think it needs a little more care to really iron out this idea. I honestly think this is two good ideas squashed into one; a story about an old radio able to hear the new cell phones, and a story about a bomb and the swat's attempts to keep the waiting people quiet and unaware as their doom approaches. Well done though.

[Rustom Irani]

BRILLIANT use of the dialog slugs to quickly rattle of character-types, serving both description and economy of script page. Voice-actors would go gaga for this.

The fact that ou never let your foot off the plot gas-pedal works quite well for the escalating tension.

My only concern is that Ray himself never felt trapped to begin with and the gradual realisation that being trapped within what is likely to be an atmoic explosion comes with it's own mini-setup of him stumbling on to the army wave-length chatter.

I personally think that it'd be awesome cool to begin with a single cop telling these guys not to leave their vehicles or something along those lines.

That and humanise him a bit more, have him search for bottled water or something on the back-seat and reveal a baby-seat. OR just a photo on his dash with wife and kid. It'd make his death much more hard-hitting.

Other than this, I think it's is a great "Twilight Zone" short, the sci-fi/doomsday/conspiracy elements don't need too much exposition as we'd just like to be with him.

Good job, Pete!