Jay Jay the Jet Plane

Jay Jay the Jet Plane
Genre	Children's television series
Created by	David Michel Deborah Michel
Written by	John Semper Eleanor Burian-Mohr
Voices of	Mary Kay Bergman Gina Ribisi Chuck Morgan Marie Danielle Dee Dee Green Julie Renick C.W. Walken Donna Cherry Ashley Alvarez Whittaker Michael Donovan
Theme music composer	Parachute Express
Composer	Stephen Michael Schwartz
Country of origin	United Kingdom United States New Zealand South Korea
Original language	English
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	60 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer	David Michel
Producer	David Michel
Production location	Tarrytown Airport in Tarrytown
Production companies	PorchLight Entertainment Modern Cartoons Wonderwings.com Entertainment Knightscove Family Films
Original release
Network	The Learning Channel (USA; 1998–2000) PBS Kids (USA; 2001–05) Qubo (USA; 2017-present) Discovery Kids (Latin America and UK) Treehouse (Canada) Nick Jr. (Australia)
Release	November 2, 1998 (1998-11-02) – November 25, 2005 (2005-11-25)

Jay Jay the Jet Plane (or simply Jay Jay) is a CGI/live action musical children's television series based at the fictional Tarrytown Airport. It has 73 episodes and is aimed at ages 2–7. The series is centered on a group of anthropomorphised aircraft who live in the fictional city of Tarrytown. 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 (and sometimes also to parents).

History

In 1994, a short live-action series was produced at AMS Production Company in Dallas, Texas, with real model plane characters and animated crafted human characters; they did not talk, but had the same personalities as in the later series. This original series was narrated similarly to early episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine or Theodore Tugboat. 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".

On November 2, 1998, the CGI/live action series premiered on The Learning Channel. Debi Derryberry took on the role of Jay Jay after Bergman's death in 1999 with no new characters voiced by her. The Learning Channel removed the series in March 2000. On June 11, 2001, all episodes began broadcasting on PBS Kids; the end credits have changed and additional episodes were created in 2001 and 2005. Home video editions were released by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment through 2003 as part of their "Columbia TriStar Family Fun" collection. Additional distribution was added with Tommy Nelson, the children's division of book publisher Thomas Nelson, although the series is not overtly "Christian". Voice actress Mary Kay Bergman provided the original voice of Jay Jay and several other characters. After her death, Debi Derryberry replaced her.

In 2005, 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.

Characters

The planes and ground vehicles are CGI characters, while the humans are live action actors.

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

Young plane characters

• Jay Jay. Male. Small blue and red jet airliner; the titular character and main protagonist. Originally voiced by Mary Kay Bergman, then replaced with Debi Derryberry after Bergman's death.
• Tracy. Female. Small pink and yellow jet airliner. Normal hearing, but understands American Sign Language. Voiced by Gina Ribisi and later Marie Danielle
• 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 and later Marie Danielle
• 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 and currently voiced by Donna Cherry after Bergman's death.

Older plane characters

• Big Jake. Male. Adult. Father figure. Silver Lockheed Super Constellation. Cargo carrier. Propeller-driven. Voiced by Chuck Morgan
• Savannah. Female. Adult. Mother figure. Silver supersonic airliner. She was made at Savannah in Georgia (USA), hence (in the story) her name. She somewhat resembles the Concorde supersonic jet. Voiced by Mary Kay Bergman and currently voiced by Donna Cherry
• Old Oscar. Male. Senior. Grandfather-like figure. Old green biplane. Voiced by Chuck Morgan

Ground vehicles

• Tuffy. Female. Blue and red towtruck, Cousin of Revvin Evan; has a speech impediment. Voiced by Gina Ribisi and later Marie Danielle
• Revvin' Evan. Male. Red fire engine, Cousin of Tuffy. Voiced by Mary Kay Bergman and currently voiced by Donna Cherry

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 Lee: is a deaf librarian at Tarrytown Library who knows American Sign Language.
• E.Z. O'Malley: Played by Brian Nahas 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.

Animals

• Breezy: is a Monarch butterfly.
• Bobby Bee and Billy Bee: are two bees.
• The lightning bugs at Lightning Bug Lake.
• The Blue Whale in the ocean.

Places

• Tarrytown is in a hilly area with enough rain to keep the land green, and frost and snow sometimes in the winter. Forested mountains and a desert are nearby.
• Tarrytown Airport is where Jay Jay and his friends live and Brenda Blue works.
  • Main Hangar
  • Kids' Hangar
  • Revvin' Evan's Firehouse
  • Herky's Hangar
  • Observation Tower
  • Old Oscar's Barn
• 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
• Michael O'Tarry School
• Andy's Donut Shop
• Farmer Dale's Ranch

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.

Episodes

Main article: 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:

• 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.

A number of proprietary software systems were used:

• 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

10 new episodes

• The Mystery of Plants
• The Mystery of Weather
• The Mystery of Size and Shape
• The Mystery of Flight
• The Mystery of the Five Senses
• The Mystery of Water
• The Mystery of Bugs
• The Mystery of Time
• The Mystery of Stars and Planets
• The Mystery of Dinosaurs

New characters

• Lina: Jay Jay's new friend.
• Montana: Safari plane.
• Captain Bob: Firefighting plane.
• Solar: Yellow. Long wide wings. 6 propellers driven by electricity from solar panels covering the tops of his wings.
• Truckee: Dump truck.

Broadcasting

United States

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

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
  • The series is broadcast in English on Channel 5, Discovery Kids and Tiny Pop and in Welsh on S4C called Ari Awyren
• France
  • The series is known as Jay Jay le Petit Avion ("Jay Jay the Small Jet")
• Spain
  • The series is known as Jay Jay, el avioncito
• Ireland
  • The series was broadcast in Irish Tadhg an t-Eitleán ("Tadhg the Plane") and English
• Portugal
  • The series is known as Jay Jay, o Jatinho ("Jay Jay the Jet")

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.
• Singapore
  • the series formerly aired on MediaCorp TV12 Central.
• Japan

  • ジェイジェイジェットプレーン (Jei Jei Jetto Purēn)

• Russia
  • The series is known as Реактивный самолётик ("Jet Airplane").

External links

• Jay Jay the Jet Plane Productions