Jay Jay the Jet Plane

Jay Jay the Jet Plane is a CGI/live action musical children's television series based at the fictional Tarrytown Airport. It has about 60 episodes and is aimed at ages 2–7. The series is centered around 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), although it has received extreme criticism for coming across as frightening, seeing as the planes are portrayed with large, bloated human faces.

History
In 1994, a short live-action series was made, with real model plane characters and animated crafted human characters. They didn't 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. On June 11, 2001, all episodes were started broadcasting on PBS Kids; 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. 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.

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 complex mathematical and CGI issues were solved by Frank Ford Little, PhD.
 * 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.

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.

Episodes
Main article: List of Jay Jay the Jet Plane episodes

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

The series is broadcast in English on Channel 5 (UK) and Discovery Kids (UK) 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").