Casey McKinnon is a Canadian

actress An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

and producer from

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, Canada. She is known for her work on

web series A web series (also known as webseries, short-form series, and web show) is a series of short scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet (i.e. World Wide Web), which first emerged in the late 1 ...

Galacticast, ''A Comicbook Orange'' and ''Kitkast''.

Background

Born and raised in

, McKinnon attended St. Thomas High School with partner Rudy Jahchan and studied

East Asian studies East Asian studies is a distinct multidisciplinary field of scholarly enquiry and education that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of East Asia past and present. The field includes the study of the region's culture, written language, histo ...

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

alongside Autumn Phillips; herself both a McGill and St Thomas High School

alumna Alumni (: alumnus () or alumna ()) are former students or graduates of a school, college, or university. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for groups of women, and alums (: alum) or alumns (: alumn) as gender-neutral alternatives. Th ...

. Before pursuing a full-time career in new media, she worked for the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

Career

Web series

McKinnon first became known under the pseudonym Ms. Kitka, the host of sex news and entertainment show ''Kitkast'', launched on October 15, 2005. Inspired by

podcasting A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an episodic series of digital audio files that users can download to a personal device or stream to listen to at a time of their ...

and British television show '' Sin Cities'', the show gained mainstream attention from

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...

and

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

. Due to a desire to make a

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

show, she decided to move onto other projects and launched ''Galacticast'' with her boyfriend Rudy Jahchan on May 8, 2006. Under the corporation name 8Bit Brownies Inc., the two went on to co-produce a short

miniseries In the United States, a miniseries or mini-series is a television show or series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. Many miniseries can also be referred to, and shown, as a television film. " Limited series" is ...

for

Next New Networks The YouTube Next Lab and Audience Development Group, founded as Next New Networks, is a company based in New York City. Next New was launched in March 2007 by founders Fred Seibert & Emil Rensing, and co-founders Herb Scannell, Timothy Shey and ...

filmed at

South by Southwest South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

called ''Pulp Secret Confessions'' and later launched the comic book and graphic novel review show ''A Comicbook Orange'' on June 6, 2006, where McKinnon worked as host. In July 2007, McKinnon was hired to host ''Pulp Secret Live At Comic-Con'', where she made a daily update show live from

San Diego Comic-Con San Diego Comic-Con is a comic book convention and multi-genre entertainment event held annually in San Diego, California, at the San Diego Convention Center. Founded in 1970, originally showcasing primarily comic books and science fiction/fant ...

,. In addition to her self-produced works, she has appeared in ''Geek Therapy'' alongside America Young,

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...

inspired

lightsaber A lightsaber is a fictional energy sword featured throughout ''Star Wars''. A typical lightsaber is shown as a luminous laser sword about in length emitted from a metal hilt around in length. First introduced in the original ''Star Wars'' ...

battle ''Elf Sabers'' with The Guild's Teal Sherer,

Babelgum Babelgum was a free-to-view Internet television platform supported by advertising. The project was set up in 2005 by Italian media and telecommunications entrepreneur Silvio Scaglia (one of the founders of Italian TelCo Fastweb (telecommunication ...

original series ''Hurtling Through Space at an Alarming Rate'' as nemesis Kalm, and the fan imagined trailer for

Elfquest ''Elfquest'' (or ''ElfQuest'') is a comic book property created by Wendy and Richard Pini in 1978, and still owned by them. It is a fantasy story about a community of Elves (Elfquest), elves and other fictional species who struggle to survive and ...

Journalism

From July to October 2007, she wrote a monthly column for The Guardian following her experiences working in web video. The articles connect new media to their

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

predecessors and reflect a desire for

Internet television Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as films and television show, television series, Streaming media, streamed over the Internet. Standing in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by Broadc ...

to be taken seriously by the

old media Old media, also called traditional media or legacy media, are the mass media institutions that dominated prior to the internet; particularly print media, film studios, music studios, advertising agencies, radio broadcasting, and television. Ol ...

community.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

Web

Awards and nominations

As a producer, McKinnon's work on ''Galacticast'' garnered five PodTech Vloggie Awards and three

Parsec The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to or (AU), i.e. . The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry, and ...

nominations, while ''A Comicbook Orange'' was nominated for Best Hosted Web Series in the

2nd Streamy Awards The 2nd Annual Streamy Awards, presented by the International Academy of Web Television, was the second installment of the Streamy Awards honoring streaming television series. The awards were held on Sunday, April 11, 2010, at the Orpheum The ...

and won Best Web Non-Fiction in Clicker.com's Best of 2010 awards. She has also been named a sexy

geek The word ''geek'' is a slang term originally used to describe Eccentricity (behavior), eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit. In th ...

by the

Montreal Gazette ''The Gazette'', also known as the ''Montreal Gazette'', is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper which is owned by Postmedia Network. It is published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the only English-language daily newspape ...

and

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

ger

Violet Blue Violet Blue is an American journalist, author, editor, advisor, and educator. Blue wrote a weekly sex column for the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' until 2010. In her podcast, Open Source Sex, she reads erotica and discusses topics such as fe ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:McKinnon, Casey 1978 births Actresses from Montreal Anglophone Quebec people Canadian film actresses Canadian newspaper reporters and correspondents Canadian television actresses The Guardian journalists Journalists from Montreal Living people McGill University alumni Canadian video bloggers Canadian women bloggers Writers from Montreal 21st-century Canadian women writers Women video bloggers