Christy Collins
Director / Creative Lead

Growing up in South Florida brought exposure to people representing a wide range of varying socio-economic, ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds, and these things shaped Christy’s perception and appreciation for both the beautiful diversity and the commonness of the human experience. Early on, Christy loved listening to people’s stories, and a desire to connect otherwise divided people and places through sharing stories began to develop in her. As she grew in her Christian faith, a deep reverence for Jesus’s choice to take up our humanity as his own became a revelation for Christy as it was a powerful example of how empathetic storytelling can effect change, action, even healing and foster loving connection in people.

Christy pursued a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre Arts with a Directing focus where she earned a reputation for emotionally-driven, honest storytelling. Throughout college, Christy spent a few days a week working with youth in an isolated, disenfranchised community in Belle Glade, Florida. Out of her interaction with those children and their stories, Christy wrote, directed and produced an awareness play called “Building 823” staged in an environmental theatre style, in which small groups of the audience walked through “live” scenes that depicted the realities of life in project housing. In the final room of the immersive experience, small groups of audiences would be challenged with a time of education, reflection and call to action.

Christy turned her attention to film when she met and married Derrick, a cinema grad, who graciously trained her in camera operation and editing. Together they spent 8 months in four different countries living among Christian communities and capturing footage for what would become her first directed film, “Then Sings My Soul,” a poetic collection of testimonies from four individuals woven together in a culminating story of love between God and his people. The film features no on-camera interviews but rather intimate audio captures of the characters telling the stories of their interactions with God, set to everyday footage of their lives, with moments of candid slice-of-life scenes to help orient and connect the audience.   

After 6 years as a video editor and illustrator for a media services company based in agriculture, Christy is delighted to be fully invested in the community here in Richmond, Virginia, through Wild Bridge Films. Within her role, her story-telling abilities have expanded beyond the editing suite to thrive throughout the entire process. Beginning with those initial conversations with clients, Christy loves to ensure that the every step of production is guided by the heart of what a client has to say and that the finished product maintains that integrity.

Christy enjoys living, investing and growing in Richmond, Virginia along with her six children and her husband, Derrick, her favorite collaborator.

Derrick Collins
Producer / Technical Lead

Growing up in rural Kansas and Missouri, Derrick’s love for filmmaking began at a very early age with his co-opting of the family’s Sony handicam. His idea of having fun pretty much always involved the camera being a part of activities. Eventually, his passion led to paying projects through his teenage years which led to pursing a Bachelor of Arts in Cinema-Television. Becoming known for his skill as a camera operator and particularly as an editor, his work on various projects went on to win Best Editing in several film festivals. 

Serving as an Associate Creative Director and Director of Media Operations, he has dedicated many years of his work to the rural atmosphere of farms and ranches across the country, telling the stories of those who raise food for our country and the world. The multitude of projects he has worked on have been seen and enjoyed by millions of people on broadcast television and the internet. He really finds his home in the stripped-down production setting of capturing regular people in the natural world in natural light, sharing their lives and stories.

Moving to and living in Richmond has felt like a call of geographical positioning to learn the stories of the significant role this place plays in the history of the land — particularly the stories of Native Americans and African Americans. The history is important as it leads us into the present and the unfolding stories of lives all around us.

Part of him wonders, does the world need more content? Do we really need more screen time? Probably not. But… there's no question that our society often turns to video to experience the world around us. Video exists as an undeniably essential tool of access. There is a sense of safety for a viewer in exploring that world through the screen of their device and from the comfort and convenience of their place of viewing, their controlled environment.

So, it is his hope as storyteller that the videos he creates would mark a stop, but not an end, of a viewer’s journey, particularly faith journeys. That the content he helps put into the world might create an emotional experience that not only educates but that provokes an action.

He considers it an honor and huge responsibility every time he gets to take the words and snippets of a person’s life and craft them into a film that represents that person with integrity and creativity.

Creating videos alongside Christy has allowed him to take his uncompromising standard of solid technical structure and apply it to her natural empathy in understanding and communicating the heart-and-soul of every story they tell. As their children get older, he is thrilled to witness their excitement in the work their parents do.

If you're curious about where our name came from, it goes a little something like this:

WILD
adjective /wahyld/

uncultivated, uninhabited.

BRIDGE
noun /brij/

something that is intended to reconcile or form a connection between two things.

FILMS
noun /films/

a story or event recorded by a camera as a set of moving images and shown in cinema or on television.

Through the powerful storytelling of cinema, we create films that serve as bridges, transporting viewers to the intimate worlds of specific people, businesses, organizations and communities, so that what exists for some as wild, unchartered territory is now explorable.