Jay Jay the Jet Plane is an American CGI/live-action children's television series based at the fictional Tarrytown Airport. It has 73 episodes and it is aimed at ages 2-6. It is centered around a fleet of talking air vehicles that live in the fictional city of Tarrytown. The episodes are commonly distributed in pairs, with one header sequence and one end credits for each pair, and each pair is 25 minutes long. Each episode contains one or more songs; each song tends to occur in one episode. Produced by John Semper, the series is intended to be educational and teach life and sometimes moral lessons to children (and sometimes also to parents). Show The Adventures of Jay Jay the Jet Plane and His Flying Friends (also known as simply Jay Jay the Jet Plane and His Flying Friends, The Adventures of Jay Jay the Jet Plane, The Adventures of Jay Jay and His Flying Friends, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, Jay Jay and His Flying Friends, The Adventures of Jay Jay or Jay Jay) is a computer animated/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 anthropomorphism aircraft who live in the mythical 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. 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). ContentsHistoryIn 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. 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. CharactersThe 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. AircraftYoung planes
Adult planes
Road vehicles
Humans
Animals
Places
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 with a photograph of real full-size or miniature tarmac. Sometimes, the planes taxi on the town streets. EpisodesEnd Credits on AiredTLC (1998-2001)
PBS (2001-2009)
ProductionThe series was produced by Modern Cartoons in Oxnard, California, USA. Unlike Thomas the Tank Engine, this series used a variety of animation techniques.
The complex mathematical and CGI issues were solved by Frank Ford Little, PhD. A number of proprietary software systems were used:
Jay Jay's Mysteries10 new episodes
New characters
Music and SongsThe theme song (sung by the popular children's musical group, Parachute Express) and the majority of the other songs were written by well-known children's singers/songwriters/musicians Stephen Michael Schwartz, Dr. Mac and David Baker. The musical background score for the series was composed by David Baker (Model series), Craig Dobbin and Brian Mann (CGI series). In the musical score, each of the characters of Tarrytown and E.Z. Airlines (for their manager E.Z. O'Malley) has their own leitmotif or corresponding instrumental signifier whenever they are present in the episodes (in a similar manner to Sergei Prokovieff's Peter and the Wolf), giving each character a recognizable motive and instrumental color to the background music. BroadcastingUnited StatesThe series was broadcast over many of the 379 member stations of PBS Kids in the United States. TranslationsIn 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). |