Summer 2018, the Florida humidity made way for rainy mornings and sunny afternoons. One Friday after class, Danny, Lesley and Avery decided to spend the pre-weekend at Avery's apartment. They ate food, watched movies, and laughed until the sun hid behind the horizon, but when the sky became dark, Avery's roommate came home. She walked in with bags of groceries, but better yet, an idea. The idea was to write an origin story about a Native American legend known as the Wendigo. She knew that the trio were good writers, so she asked them to develop the legend into a screenplay. The plan was to write a script good enough to present to the roommate's family in hopes that they would agree to make it happen. Unfortunately, the film's plans fell through, but though it seemed like a loss at the time, that fall-through inspired the screenwriting trio to write the script that would become All My Heart.
The trio worked through their conflicting school schedules to meet up at the school library as much as they could. There, they would spend hours creating an intriguing plot, realistic characters, and building the world in which it would all take place. It started with extensive research on the Algonquin tribe and their culture. They all put in the strenuous time and effort to find credible sources to make their story as authentic as possible. Once they had a solid idea of what they were working with, Avery and Lesley delved deeper into creating genuine characters. Meanwhile, Danny worked on forming an original plot that stayed true to the legend.
They spent four days in each of the following two weeks creating what would be the first and second act of the story. Bickering about creative choices, working on dialogue voices, and drying out every dry-erase marker in the library, they made it through.
They spent full evenings at the library, some days until it even closed. But though the struggles of managing both school deadlines and regular life got in the way sometimes, they persisted and eventually finished a complete script.
Through the script's lifetime, edits were made, revisions were done, and many changes and modifications were added and removed. And even after months of completion, there have been a few edits.
Time pulled the writers' lives away from the script for three years until one day they decided to get back to it and submit it to festivals. Everyone agreed that would be the story's fate, and so far, it's gone well.
All My Heart went on to win the Festigious Film Festival award for Best Short Screenplay in April 2021. It also earned a Critic's Choice Award for Madras Film Festival. They plan on submitting to more festivals, hoping to continue their award-winning run.
After graduating from university, Danny went on to write and publish his first novel, a western drama adventure Two in the Chamber.
Lesley created a Horror podcast, Captain Jack's Story Emporium, where she invites people to submit scary stories based on the topic of the week. She then reads the chosen stories and talks about their horror elements.
Avery entered and won BehindTheVision's poetry contest, where her work will be showcased in their upcoming book, Completely Random Writing Prompts: Poetry, Volume I
They have plans to move to New York City together, where they will continue to write hopeful award-winning scripts like All My Heart
DANNY H. NÚÑEZ LESLEY VIZAK AVERY E. WEDDELL
IG: @magicdanny_ Twitter: @lesleyvizak Twitter: @avery_waddles
IG: @lesleyvizak