Chisom Ukoha
staff writer
@Uchisom 3
Aaron T. Maynard is a senior at Coppell High School, who wants to pursue a career in either acting, engineering or both. Aaron Maynard is also part of the SARDn team. SARDn stands for Search and Rescue Drone. The other two team members, Andrew Lautzenheiser and Alejandro Arroyo are also students at Coppell High School.
Their goals for SARDn are for it to: have loading capacity of at least five pounds, have a radio range of at least one mile, sustain at least 30 minutes of flight, wirelessly transmit video, autonomous “Return To Home” when connection is lost, night vision capabilities for use at night.
Q: Why did you start engineering?
A: I started engineering because I thought it is a great way for me to have fun with what I do and get paid, working with NASA or selling product I make, really well with something I love.
Q: What was the first thing you made?
A: The first thing that I made was a go-cart with a friend about four years ago. We took apart a regular go-cart and put in a gas motor and we put on all other devices. The main device we put on it was a sentry gun for airsoft. And the first thing that I created on my own, from design process to fabrication would have to be something that I am working on right now, is a search and rescue drone, from the project SARDn The point of it is to reach locations that emergency units aren’t be able to reach. It is currently in development, and will be done by the end of this year.
Q: Which of your inventions are you most proud of?
A: The one I am currently most proud of is not a physical invention, but it is actually a digital one. After watching the Iron Man movies a lot, I created my own artificial intelligence that I booted up on my computor. I call him J.A.M.E.S.; he is based off of J.A.R.V.I.S from Iron Man. He basically helps me check my email, all the menial task that I do in my life. Technically it isn’t artificial, because it doesn’t learn from its own mistakes and has to be programmed, but it is always being updated. I have the code to make it truly artificial, but it isn’t artificial because it takes a lot of material and programming to make it one.
Q: When did you start acting?
A: About a year ago. It was two summers ago, and my mom came up and asked me “Aaron you wanna start acting”, and I was like “sure, why not”. So we went up to these people and said “hey I wanna be an actor” and they said “you do have a face for it, so yea. We will go ahead and put you on contact list and if anything comes up we will call you.”
But I never got any calls, and some time later some people from Chicago came to Dallas and they had a whole bunch of us from One Source Talent sign up. They had us all line up, and they looked at me and said “Wow, we want you to come to Chicago with us.” They looked at my face, my body, and they said that I had a very nice complexion. They thought I was there for modeling, and not acting, so when I told them I had stage experience with magic and stuff like that, they said “Wow, you have stage experience, this is gonna be awesome.” then they offered me a full scholarship to go to Chicago.
I was screened in front of alot of agencies, such as MTV, Disney, Nickelodeon, CESD Agency and The Campbell Agency. I signed with CESD and the Campbell Agency. The CESD gives me all my movies deal, such as “Carter High”, which comes out in 2015, Cardiac and also “The After Effect.” And I have done about six commercials, five with “Dude Perfect” and one with an international Pepsi commercial.
Click here for his Pepsi Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAMcW8UDNuI
Q: Which movie is your favorite so far?
A: Carter High [to be released in 2015]. It is a movie that deals with racism in the 1980s. It is mainly about an all black high school, called Carter High, which is based on a real high school in Plano. It is about their football team and their struggle to get to state. I play the white quarterback for a different Plano high school that beat them but later on they beat us. There are several part that are heart touching.
Q: What is your least favorite one so far?
A: It is a short film called The After Effect. It is a post-apocalyptic movie. It had a lot of potential, but the director was not good at time scheduling or directing. Every single time he needed me to go out there it just conflicted with my schedule. It was also my first film.
Q: Which was your favorite thing to film?
A: It is the commercial I did with Nerf Mega Madness, with Dude Perfect. The trick shots usually take a while to get, thats why when you see the videos online they are so happy, they are like “Yes, we finally did it!!!”. But when I did my trick shot I got it on my third shot. The shouting in the video is actually real, because they were actually surprised that I got it so fast.
The guy’s reaction to the cold water was actually real, because he didn’t expect me to knock it over so fast, that is why at the end of the film he tries to pour the leftover water on us. After filming we got to spend the whole day at Six Flags Over Texas, and Nerf had rented out the whole park so there were no lines, and it was a school day.
Click here to watch his Nerf Mega Madness commercial, with Dude Perfect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAMcW8UDNuI
To read more about his engineering project you can read about them on: http://aaronmaynard.com/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page
And to read more about his acting career, you can read about it on: http://aaronmaynard.com
