Introducing Emma and her commentaries

My name’s Emma, and I am currently in my first year working as a freelance production assistant. In these commentaries I’ll be sharing with you what I get up to, the n00by mistakes I’ll inevitably make, but hopefully some successes!
This month I was fortunate enough to be a part of the Tony Hawk Twitter Hunt. If only the life of a production assistant was always this exciting!
Usually my main goal at Easter is to eat as much chocolate as humanly possible. This year however, I had to climb the 311 steps of London's Monument Tower with two signed Tony Hawks decks!
Confused? Well if you missed all the #THTH hype on Twitter then let me explain.
Saturday 23rd April marked the 3rd annual Tony Hawk Twitter Hunt (THTH). It originated when Tony, driving to his office, stuck his skateboard in a bush and then tweeted the location. By the time he reached the office, he had received a tweet from the lucky finder! And thus the THTH was born.
This year, 100 boxes were hidden in different cities across the world. Some of the boxes included skateboards, bikes, clothing and helmets. With prizes like these it's no surprise that the hunt is becoming ever more popular each year! And a group of us at MediaKinetic (@mediakinetic) were privileged to be the hiders for two London prizes.
Four days before the hunt itself we took to London's Southbank to film an action packed promo video, featuring a freerunner and a skateboarder. I spent the day carrying kit (I’ve acquired the name ‘she-rah’) and buying water for our poor skater - it was incredibly sunny that day! I also kept an eye out for potential shots, one that I suggested even went into the final edit! It pays to speak your mind sometimes I guess.
On the day of the Hunt my Twitter feed went into a state of #THTH frenzy! This frenzy set the pace for the rest of the day, as our clue was tweeted half an hour before schedule. Myself and fellow hider Jon (@jpratchett) set off for Monument, slightly concerned that the finders might get there before the prizes!
And boy were they eager. I’m still in mourning for my wasted frappachino that had to be chucked as we received a message saying we had finders on the way. And only half an hour after Tony tweeted the clue!
Progress was halted slightly as we had to negotiate with the dutiful ticket lady who insisted that our decks could not go up the Tower with us! But after some sweet-talking and compromise we were soon on our way.
I'm still not sure how we (Jon) managed it, but we made it up the 311 steps, and successfully took a bit of footage of the long way down with a Gopro. The Gopro turned out to be a very useful bit of kit as the lens was able to fit through the mesh surrounding the viewing balcony.
Jon donned his bright (potentially radioactive) yellow #THTH tshirt and we both kept a look out for potential finders. The poor guy did get several strange looks from people who were quite obviously not on twitter! About another half an hour later, we had our first winners, a couple who had ran most of the way from the first clue at Southbank skatepark. In flip-flops! Not long later we spotted the next finder, a longboarder, (who obviously failed at sweet-talking our friend the ticket lady, as he reached the top of the Tower board-less). I kept a 7d to hand to make sure we captured the moment where Jon handed over the much desired decks. Once they made it back down the Tower, we grabbed an interview with both our winners, filmed on an EX3. Turns out our second winner was all the way from Ecuador, and being a skater himself, he was so pleased to have won one of the decks.
Being involved with the Tony Hawk Twitter Hunt was fantastic. Quite often social media and social networking can be viewed as a rather selfish medium. We share what's on our minds, keep our friends and followers up to date with what we're up to. So it was great that someone so widely looked up to wanted to give back to his fans, and all through Twitter!
Emma can be contacted at @emmabeanies. To view the #THTH video go to vimeo.com/mediakinetic