Aaron Mull, a 2012 Great Bend High School graduate, is beginning to make a name for himself in the world of internet video. This Wednesday night, June 29, a small clip of a 2013 video he made and posted will be shown on the MTV show “Catfish,” for a special showcasing the makers’ favorite parodies of their show.
Mull has come a long way in his video career since he made and posted that video on YouTube four years ago. Monday morning, he was at the offices of Native Digital in midtown Kansas City, Mo. Native Digital is a full-scale marketing and graphic design team. Some of his projects include photo shoots and video promoting tourism in destination cities around the country.
In his spare time, Mull works on independent video projects, one of which is the short documentary released on Vimeo On Demand this spring, titled “Internet Kids.”
The video follows the day in the life of three internet video stars as they attend the 2015 VidCon in Anaheim, Calif. VidCon is a convention for the internet video industry. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rating for “Internet Kids” is 8.4 out of 10 stars. The documentary premiered at Toronto’s Buffer Festival in October, 2016, which spurred Vimeo’s interest.
Mull said his passion for video was sparked by his parents, and encouraged further by Great Bend High School drama teacher Dan Heath during his senior year. The drama class had been making music video projects since the 2008-2009 school year.
Heath said Mull actually taught him a thing or two.
“Aaron was already making and posting videos to YouTube when he came to my class,” Heath said. “I gave him a place to do video at school, not just home. It was clear, he had a strong interest and talent and he was really going to do something with it.”
Mull impressed his teacher early on with a three-minute silent film he created for a class assignment.
“It was brilliant. I could tell then that he knew how to tell a story visually,” he said.
But there was another independent project he and classmates put together his senior year which earned Mull the nickname “Burrito Boy.” It involved launching a Playa Azul burrito into space.
In order to pull it off, Mull had to raise the money, and he had to contact the Federal Aviation Administration to get permission to launch the burrito, which travelled at least 100,000 feet up in the air before it began its rapid descent. The video was featured on the nationally syndicated morning news show “Good Morning America,” and it was also mentioned on the cable television show “Tosh.O.”
After high school, Mull went on to study video production in college, and returned to GBHS to share his experience with Heath’s high school drama class a few years later. At that time, Heath had made some key changes to the advanced drama curriculum, and created the video production class, a Career Technical Education class.
“It’s too bad we didn’t have the program when Aaron was a student,” he said. “I can only imagine what he would have done with the equipment we have now.”
Heath remarked that the mission statement for the school is to “create lifelong learners,” and, to him, that means helping them find their passion. With Mull, he feels they were successful.
Currently, Mull is between projects, but will be starting another one soon. The details are still under wraps. But, there are several of his vlogs (video blogs) and short videos available to watch on his YouTube channel. Just search “Aaron Mull.”
