Jay Jay the Jet Plane

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Jay Jay the Jet Plane
GenreChildren's television series
Written byJohn Semper
Eleanor Burian-Mohr
Voices ofMary Kay Bergman
Gina Ribisi
Chuck Morgan
Theme music composerParachute Express
ComposerStephen Michael Schwartz
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons4
No. of episodes60 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producerDavid Michel
ProducerDavid Michel
Production companiesPorchLight Entertainment
Modern Cartoons
Wonderwings.com Entertainment
Knightscove Family Films
Original release
NetworkPBS Kids
The Learning Channel
Discovery Kids
Release2 November 1998 –
30 December 2005

Jay Jay the Jet Plane is an American CGI children's television series based at the fictional Tarrytown Airport. It has about 60 episodes and is aimed at ages 2–7. Characters include talking airplanes with human faces and ground vehicles, a helicopter with a human face and humans. The episodes are commonly distributed in 25-minute-long (as without commercials) pairs, with one header sequence and one end credits for each pair. Each episode contains one or more songs.

The theme song and the majority of the other songs were written by well-known children's singer/songwriter Stephen Michael Schwartz and sung by his popular musical group, Parachute Express. Created by David and Deborah Michel, the series is intended to be educational and to teach life and moral lessons to children, although it has received extreme criticism for coming across as frightening, seeing as the planes are portrayed with large, bloated human faces.

History

The series premiered on November 2, 1998 on The Learning Channel before all episodes were started broadcasting on PBS Kids on June 11, 2001; additional episodes were created 2001 and 2005. Home video editions were released by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment through 2003 as part of their "Columbia TriStar Family Fun" collection. Distribution was then moved over to Tommy Nelson, the children's division of book publisher Thomas Nelson, although not being a "Christian" series. Voice actress Mary Kay Bergman provided the original voice of Jay Jay and several other characters.

In 2006, "new" episodes were produced featuring additional characters, including the red Latino plane Lina. Each episode begins featuring a "Jay Jay's Mysteries" segment in which Jay Jay and Lina explore such things that may be mysteries to the intended age group, such as how planes fly and how the five senses are used. The mysteries segment is followed by a story that comes from the original episodes of the series so in effect the new series repackages previously broadcast content.

Previous to the 1998 series, a short non-animated series was made in 1994, with real model plane characters and animated crafted human characters. They did not talk, but had the same personalities. The original series was narrated similarly to early episodes of Thomas The Tank Engine or Theodore Tugboat.[1] It contained three videos: Jay Jay's First Flight, Old Oscar Leads the Parade, and Tracy's Handy Hideout. These three episodes were known as the "pilot series".

Characters

The planes and ground vehicles are CGI characters.

Relationship words for the aeroplane characters refer to being in loco parentis for purposes of upbringing and education, not to biological parenthood. The story says that (some of) the aeroplane characters were made in factories.

Some of the stories describe characters as doing actions off-screen that would need foldaway arms (e.g. Big Jake digging holes), but those arms are never seen on screen.

The planes and ground vehicles are CGI characters.

Young plane characters

  • Jay Jay. Male. Small blue and red jet airliner. Voiced by Mary Kay Bergman
  • Tracy. Female. Small pink and yellow jet airliner. Normal hearing, but understands American Sign Language. Voiced by Gina Ribisi
  • Snuffy. Male. Small green propeller monoplane. Is equipped for skywriting. In episode consistency (which depends on the order), one episode says that he has not flown further away from Tarrytown than Lightning Bug Lake, but other episodes show him flying much further; in "Catch the Buzz" Snuffy still has not got rid of his original shyness, but in many other episodes he shows no sign of shyness. Voiced by Gina Ribisi
  • Herky. Male. Yellow and green helicopter. In the original series, he spoke with a stutter (Like Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Character Porky Pig). In the CGI series, he rolls his "R"s whenever he speaks, and often pronounces stressed "er" as long vocalic "r" ([ɹ̩]), e.g. "I'm Herky" as [aɪm hɹ̩ːˈkǐ], with a strong high-rising pitch accent on the final "-y". He has skids instead of wheels and cannot taxi on the ground. Voiced by Mary Kay Bergman

Older plane characters

Ground vehicles

Humans

  • Brenda Blue: Woman in blue clothing and usually wears a red cap or a blue cap. In charge of the airport, and is the mechanic. She does not use the airport's control tower but communicates with the planes by a portable two-way radio from the ground. Played by Eve Whittle and Vanessa Stacey in the UK version.
  • Mrs. Blue: is Brenda Blue's mother who sometimes visits Tarrytown Airport.
  • Miss Jones: is a deaf librarian at Tarrytown Library who knows American Sign Language.
  • E.Z. O'Malley. He founded E.Z. Airlines and his cousins are Grumpy O'Malley (lives at Dewdrop Farm), Pierre O'Malley (lives in France) and Tex O'Malley (lives in Texas). (Note: here 'Z' is pronounced 'zee', not 'zed'.)
  • Other human characters appear from time to time.
  • Tarrytown Airport is run by a small firm called E.Z. Airlines.
  • In Tarrytown is a school called the Michael O'Tarry School.

Animals

Places

  • Tarrytown is in a hilly area with enough rain to keep the land green, and frost and snow sometimes in the winter. Both forested mountains and a desert are nearby.
  • Tarrytown Airport is where Jay Jay and his friends live and Brenda Blue works.
  • Tarrytown National Park
  • Smiling Meadow
  • Sandy Landing has a waterfront area.
  • Pangabula Island
  • Tarrytown Quarry
  • Sunshine Desert
  • Tippy Toppy Peak
  • Frosty Pines
  • Echo Canyon
  • Cherry Tree Lake
  • Crystal Cave
  • Lightning Bug Lake

Tarrytown and its airport are never seen in moving-camera shots, and therefore are likely real miniature sets which were photographed and those photographs were used as backgrounds in the CGI images. The airport runway may be a CGI ground plane texture mapped with a photograph of real full-size or miniature tarmac. Sometimes, the planes taxi on the town streets.[original research?][citation needed]

Episodes

See List of Jay Jay the Jet Plane episodes

Production

The series was produced by Modern Cartoons in Oxnard, California, USA. Unlike Thomas the Tank Engine, this series used a variety of animation techniques:[original research?][citation needed]

  • The backgrounds were miniature sets (usually built on two 4 by 8 feet (1,200 mm × 2,400 mm) sheets of plywood).
  • Brenda Blue was a live action actress shot in front of a greenscreen.
  • The planes were computer models created in Maya and a proprietary software.
  • The movement of the planes was recorded by playing out the scene with wood models equipped with magnetic position sensors. The planes had a switch to aid landing and taxiing, due to some minor fluctuations in the magnetic positioning data.
  • The planes' faces and lip synching were done by face tracking, a technique where reflective spots are put on a voice actor's face. The voice track is digitally recorded along with the spot data. Then the face is rendered using a form of parametric animation.
  • Head movement and other effects were done by joysticks.

The complex mathematical and CGI issues were solved by Frank Ford Little, PhD.[clarification needed][citation needed]

A number of proprietary software systems were used:[citation needed]

  • Data/audio recording and smoothing were done on a Windows machine.
  • Daily cuts were done on "Compaq Alpha" computers running a 64-bit version of Windows NT 4.0.

Jay Jay's Mysteries

Broadcasting

United States

The series was broadcast over many of the 379 member stations of PBS Kids in the United States.

Translations

In foreign versions of the show, the human characters are often replaced with different actors. For example, in the Korean version of the show, a Korean actor takes the role of Brenda. Unusually, the Irish version of Jay Jay the Jet Plane mostly uses non-native speaker actors from Belfast (although some minor parts are played by native-speaking actors from the Gaeltacht).

Europe

  • United Kingdom
  • France
    • The series is known as Jay Jay le Petit Avion
  • Spain
    • The series is known as Jay Jay, el avioncito
  • Republic of Ireland
    • The series was broadcast in Irish Tadhg an t-Eitleán and English
  • Portugal
    • The series is known as Jay Jay, o Jatinho [1]

Asia

  • Malaysia
    • The series was formerly shown in original version on TV2 in the early 2000s (decade). It was also dubbed in Malay by Filem Karya Nusa and aired on Astro Ria, also in the early 2000s (decade). It was later shown with new episodes on Astro Ceria in 2009 where the Malay dubbing is made in-house.
  • Japan
    • ジェイジェイジェットプレーン (Jei Jei Jetto Purēn)

References

  1. ^ "Amazon.com Jay Jay's First Flight VHS".
  2. ^ http://pbskids.org/jayjay/care.characterpoll.shtml
  3. ^ http://www.s4c.co.uk/ariawyren/index2.htm

External links

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