Not Yet!

The new site will replace this one shortly!

Ruby Skye P.I. The Spam Scam – Chapter 1: Animal Farm will be live at noon Eastern.

[Vimeo http://vimeo.com/16112416 w=500;h=400]

Starting Monday

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!

Friends of Ruby Skye P.I.

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

Marlee Maslove Plays Ruby’s Sister Hailey

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.

Kevin Gutierrez Plays Ruby’s BFF

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.

Ruby’s Pogo

A camera is an essential component of a digital detective’s toolkit and Ruby Skye depends on her camera a lot.

She puts the photos she takes up on her evidence board, so she prints out a lot of her photos. Sometimes, she needs a photo immediately, that’s why she carries a Polaroid Pogo with a built-in printer. It shoots digital pictures that she can upload to Flickr or her Facebook feed, but it spits out hard evidence of what she’s observed, no matter where Ruby is.

Polaroid supplied us with the Pogo that Ruby carries with her and uses to take all her photos.  On set, everyone who touched the Pogo fell in love with it.  There is something really fun about watching the Polaroid picture slide out of the side of the camera. And it doesn’t hurt that once printed, you can peel off the backing and the picture becomes a sticker.

Lucky Number Three!!

It’s getting exciting.  Only six more sleeps until launch.  But around here, the fun never stops.  So we have something new for you to look at today: a brand new teaser entitled Life on the Set.

One of the things that makes this teaser especially awesome is that the director is Aidan Cheeatow.  Aidan is 14 and a film major at Claude Watson School for the Arts.  He is also the brother of Madison Cheeatow, who plays Ruby Skye.

When we heard that Madison’s brother was a young filmmaker, we invited him to set, gave him a camera and full access to cast and crew and forced him to make a little film.

Here it is.  We think it’s great.

Elena Gorgevska Plays the Mean Girl

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.

Comment on Our Comment Policy

One week from today, when Ruby Skye P.I.: The Spam Scam launches, we’ll also be launching our new site. And it’s going to be fabulous!
As we’re getting it ready we have to prepare some policies about how people can use the site and what our responsibilities are to the audience.

I’m getting four documents ready:

A comment policy

An advertising policy

A privacy policy

A web safety policy.

I will be sharing them here as I draft them, so that you can feed in.

rubyskyepi.com is meant for kids so we want everything to be clear and easy to read.  We want the site to be a safe environment that parents, teachers, librarians and other adults feel good about recommending to kids.  That’s why we are publishing these policies in advance.  We want input from the community.

Here’s the comment policy:

We want to know what you think about Ruby Skye P.I.  The site has lots of places to leave comments and questions or talk to other members of the community.  You can leave messages for Ruby on her blog and she’ll answer lots of them.

To keep rubyskyepi.com a safe and positive place be nice to other people, smart about sharing information and enjoy what we have to offer.

If you need us to spell it out, here are the things you can’t do:

• No swearing, flaming, bullying, racism, sexism or just plain being mean.  We’ll take down comments that are hurtful to others.
• No selling, advertising or spamming.  We’ll remove that too.
• No personal information about yourself or anyone else.  That’s right, that stuff’s going too.

Some comments won’t appear on the site until we’ve read and approved them.  We’ll try to be quick about it but if you write a comment and it doesn’t appear right away, don’t worry.  We’ll get to it.

Now, go ahead, comment, share and have fun!

Let us know what you think.

Hailey’s Anti-Water Bottle Campaign

In The Spam Scam, Hailey Skye carries around a petition asking City Hall to ban plastic water bottles. She asks everyone she meets to sign it.

Here’s what Hailey’s petition says:

TO CITY HALL:
We the undersigned believe that water is a human right and urge City Hall to ban bottled water for the following reasons:

Bottled water makes people think that tap water isn’t safe;

Bottling, manufacturing and transporting bottled water wastes massive amounts of fossil fuel.

Bottled water wastes public water that citizens need. It takes three to five litres of water to manufacture a one litre plastic bottle of water. Water shortages have been reported in the Great Lakes region near water bottling plants.

Bottled water creates huge garbage and recycling problems.

Therefore, we ask City Hall to disposable plastic water bottles so future generations can enjoy a clean environment. We hope you understand the gravity of the situation and will support our noble cause. Down with plastic!

When we launch our website, we’ll have an online petition for you to sign if you support Hailey’s cause.

We’ll also be running the Skye Sisters Tap Water Campaign. You can join Ruby and Hailey in their fight to end plastic water bottle pollution by pledging to stop drinking from disposable bottles.

We’ll have lots more information about water, water bottle pollution and what you can do right here on rubyskyepi.com when the series launches on October 25th 2010.

For now, why not go Change.org’s petition for an international treaty to provide clean water everywhere.  You can sign the petition right here!