Ruby Skye P.I.

Elena Gorgevska has quite a bit of experience in front of the camera.

She’s been in short films, a TV movie and a feature. She’s been on sets much more than most of the other kids in Ruby Skye P.I. But she’s never played the part of a mean girl before!

Elena plays Diana Noughton, who is very very mean to Ruby for highly mysterious reasons. In real life, Elena is sweet and nice. But on screen, she’s very nasty as Diana… which shows you what a good actress she is.

Kevin Gutierrez plays Griffin Lane, Ruby Skye’s best friend.  Kevin didn’t have a great deal of acting experience when he joined the project.  He had done some modelling and had been on stage in some school and camp productions.

Kevin is a tremendous athlete.  He plays rep soccer and select hockey.  He also plays basketball, snowboards, skis, bikes and  rides horses.  He’s also a mystifying magician!

He’ll be 15 years old in just a few days and goes to high school in York Region.

Marlee Maslove is no stranger to web series — or to playing Hailey.  Over the last two years, she’s shot ten episodes of Hailey Hacks, a web series that shows you cool things to do with your computer.

Marlee has spent a lot of time on stage. For the last four years, she has been a member of the Randolph Young Company.   Not only was she in musical theatre five productions with RYC, each show ran for more than a dozen performances, which adds up to a lot of stage time.

She’s also been a featured extra in two TV series: Blue Murder and Metropia.

Marlee is 13 years old and is in grade 8 at an alternative school in downtown Toronto.

We’re all used to seeing ads — on the bus, in magazines, billboards, on TV, even in movie theatres.  Most of the time, they look like ads. They’re separate from the story, articles or content.

Sometimes, the product is shown inside the story — that’s called product placement.  Ruby Skye’s camera is a Polaroid Pogo, given to us by Polaroid as a way of advertising the camera.

There’s another kind of advertising called product integration.  Then it’s not just that you see the product in the story, but it’s part of the story and the characters talk about it.  Ruby, Hailey, Griffin and Diana go to The Dragon Academy.  The Dragon is a real school in downtown Toronto that became part of our story as a way of letting kids and parents know more about the school.  That’s advertising too.

You can see product integration at work if you check out readmysistersreportcard.com.  Remember how in Ruby Skye P.I. and The Case of the Missing Brownies Hailey uploaded Ruby’s report card to the internet?  Well, the report card is a work of fiction, but it’s on a real report card form from The Dragon Academy.  The teachers names are made up, but the principal’s name, Dr. Meg Fox, is real.

There are a lot of rules about advertising to kids; lots of parents, educators and government officials are worried about ads that trick kids or take advantage of them.

We’d like to know what you think about the kinds of advertizing that are part of Ruby Skye P.I. — especially if you’re 16 or under.

Some of the things we’d really like to know are:

Would you rather pay for entertainment yourself or have advertizers pay for the entertainment?

What do you think of product placement and product integration?  Does it make you like products more or less?  Do feel fooled?  Would you rather we stuck to more traditional forms of advertizing?

We’d love your opinions, please share!

In Chapter 4, A Real Green Dress, Ruby takes a photo of the computer screen and prints it out right away. The camera she’s using is a a Polaroid Pogo. It’s a very cool camera that the people at Polaroid gave to us to use in the series.

A camera is an essential component of a digital detective’s toolkit and Ruby Skye depends on her camera a lot. She takes lots of photos and puts the pictures on her evidence board which she uses to solve the mystery. The Pogo prints out, but it is also a digital camera, so you can upload the images to Facebook, Flickr or email them to your friends.

We thought the Polaroid Pogo was the perfect camera for Ruby Skye to carry so we were glad when they gave us a camera to use in The Spam Scam. In return for the camera, we put their logo on our site — if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll see it.

For Polaroid, this is a form of advertising. Giving us the camera is a way of getting lots of people to see it in action.

Have you seen this yet?

How did Madison Cheeatow get the part as Ruby Skye?

She auditioned for the part along with about 25 other girls.

Far more 14 to 20 year old girls sent in resumes and in head shots when they heard we were casting. Some – including Madison and Elena Gorgevska who plays Diana -  were submitted by their agents.  Others saw our casting call at their local drama club, on Craig’s list or one of the casting sites like Mandy or Casting Workbook.

There were a lot of emails and lots of photos to look at and resumes to read.  When we were picking who to audition, we chose girls with some experience.  It didn’t have to be professional.  Training is good too – kids who’d taking acting classes or improv or who had been in school plays.

Madison had done been in plays at school and at a community theatre.  She’s also done some modeling.

Her audition was terrific.  We could tell that she really understood Ruby.  She seemed very natural.

We watched the audition videos over a few times and knew she was Ruby Skye.  We called her agent and offered Madison the part.

Every day when we look at her performance as we edit the chapters of The Spam Scam we know we made the right choice.

You’re going to like her too when you see her in Chapter 1: Animal Farm on Monday October 25.

Mystery!
Adventure!
Starving stuffed animals!
A brand new comedy detective series!

Ruby Skye P.I.
The Spam Scam

12 great video chapters.
Mondays and Thursdays.
Curtain goes up Monday October 25
@ noon Eastern.

Can 15 year old Ruby Skye figure who is running the email scam and get her wacky neighbor’s money back? Maybe, but she’s going to lose a lot of friends along the way!

June 18 – that’s the day I got the email from the Independent Production Fund saying they would finance Ruby Skye P.I.: The Spam Scam. That was 132 days ago. Almost 19 weeks. Four months. Not long at all.

In four more days you’ll get a sample of what we’ve accomplished in that time. But that’s end product.

We’ve tried to be as open about our process in getting here as time allowed. One thing that should be clear by now is that we’ve been having the time of our lives. Not enough time… And yeah, the budget was lean. But our team has been phenomenal and more than made up for the lack of cash with passion and dedication.

Before we lift the curtain on the final product, I want to say thank you to everyone who brought their passion, commitment, energy and time to this project for no money or way less than their market value.

First thank you to Andra, Carly and the board of The Independent Production Fund for giving us this shot. We hope to prove to you that your investment in web series was a very smart and forward thinking move.

Our beloved sponsors! Ruby Skye P.I. is only possible thanks to the generous support of our sponsors in corporate Canada, local small businesses, organizations and the creative contributions of many, many independent film, video & digital artists. These include: Berman & Co. The Dragon Academy,  Eastern Script Inc., Steven Golick at Osler, Polaroid, Post City Sound, PS Production Services,  Rocket Science VFX, TEACH Magazine, Fat Cat Wine Bar,  The Big Chill,Believerville Productions, Choroid Films, Inkling Entertainment Inc., Montefiore Films,  Brendan Meadows Photography Inc., Richard Maslove Music, Film & Event Solutions, Total Two-Way – Motorola, Trew Audio, Office Coffee Solutions. I want to apologize for the fact that I couldn’t get your logos to look any better on this page. But I promise that on Monday, when we open the new site, your logos will look gorgeous!

Team Ruby Skye: Crew, volunteers, social media and research support, post-production team, the parents of our cast, fabulous kids who were extras, background filmmakers — of all ages, our spouses…  So many people contributed to this project with time, passion and perspiration.  I can’t name you all here now, but I love you all and will be forever in your debt. What a thrill to work with so many good looking, hard working, smart, funny people.

Our cast, both young and old: you guys have been fabulous and funny. You breathed life into the characters and the script. I can’t wait to share your work with the world wide web.

Steven! I wouldn’t be here without your encouragement and support. I think you owe me lunch!

Karen — a.k.a. Kevin O’Leary  – your brilliance never ceases to astound me plus you keep my eyes focused on the prize.

Kelly, my creative doppleganger. When I’m too tired to see straight, I know I can close my eyes because you will push for perfection.

Kerry, there is not a minute that goes by that I don’t whisper a thanks to the universal powers that brought you to this project. Never leave me!!

My final thanks is to all of you who’ve been following the project from afar, cheering us on. We feel an incredible sense of community around us. Your support has kept us going and fueled and nourished us. We hope we’ve done you proud.

We’re going to go dark now to focus on getting everything ready.

Curtain goes up Monday at noon Eastern. See you then.

Most of the official @RubySkyePI tweeting has been done by the phenomenal Dorice Tepley with support from Kerry, Karen and I.  All of us have felt amazing support from the Twitter community.  Today being Follow Friday, we want to say thanks to some of our wonderful Twitter fans.  You’ve made these last weeks and months so much easier!

Angus Swantee: @angusswantee; Judith Klassen: @judecast; Ruffus The Dog: @ruffusthedog; Canadian Film Centre: @cfccreates: Nora, Dan, Carma: @sparkcbc; Suzi Shelton: @SuziShelton; Margot Leblanc: @margotleblanc; Stephanie Law: @sphinxmagic; Caroline Godin: @carolinegodin; Billi Dee Knight: @billiknight; Jenn Schachter: @jennschac;
Emily Schooley: @the_emi;
Richard Baldwin: @songteller;
Sharon: @creehawk;
Kelly Lynne Ashton: @klashton27;
Nathan Estabrooks: @skoorbatse;
Ian Yorski: @IanYorski;
Suzanne Keppler: @srk_to;
GopherX.net: @GopherXdotnet;
Bianca Filoteo: @biancafiloteo;
Henrietta Walmark: @ettagirl;
Emme Rogers: @EmmeRogers;
Garner Haines; @garnerhaines; Chubby Kay: @ChubbyKay; Jesse Abundis: @jessenovels; Christopher Bolton: @billybuck; Elize Morgan: @elizemorgan; Jennica Harper: @jennicaharper; Micah J. Reid: @mjreid;  KrysstaKM: @KrysstaKM; Lindsay Stewart: @lindsaymstewart;Marilyn Thomas: @MonkeyMarilyn; Robbo Mills: @RobboMills; Scott Albert: @ScottAlbert; Brandon Laraby: @BCLaraby; The Shorts Report: @shortsreport; Andrew Williamson: @OffIslandFilms; Shawnee Rockett: @ShawneeRockett; David Clive: @_creeboy; Mary Henricksen: @garryoakgirl; Stitch Media: @stitchmedia; Shawn Rockett: @ShawnRockett; Shaw Rocket Fund: @RocketFund; Erica Landrock: @ericalandrock; Lucia Mancuso: @lulula; Jessica Frey: @WGCFrey; Courtney Wolfson: @CourtneyWord; Laura Brodie: @laubrodie; Ross McKie: @rossmckie; Fraser Mills: @filmarmy; Katherine Fletcher: @kathfletcher; Michael Dolan: @EvilPRGuy; Shane Lindley: @ImaginaryEric; Gail Renard: @GailRenard; Liz Hover: @LizHover; Chris Bucci: @cbucci_bookman; Will Dixon: @wcdixon