Christy Collins
Director / Editor / Camera Operator

Christy’s spark for empathetic storytelling began early in her youth. Whether it was a close friend or a character she met through her avid consumption of books, Christy discovered her tendency to feel what others were feeling, even though their circumstances were not her own. Those feelings would bubble over into expression as she would often share the stories of those affecting her at the dinner table and would not feel content until those stories were not just known but felt by her audience.    

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 her perception and appreciation for both the diversity and the commonness of the human experience. 

Led by her drive to affect people with story, she 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” in which small groups of the audience would actually walk through live scenes that depicted the realities of life in project housing. 

Christy turned her attention to film when she met and married Derrick, a cinema grad. What started out as a simple idea for her to train as a second shooter evolved into a deep passion to direct video projects. From the beginning preproduction stage of vision-casting, to the improvisation of candid shoots, all the way through to the emotional arranging of the story in the editing suite, Christy thrives in her role as director.

Derrick Collins
Producer / Editor / Camera Operator

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, he found himself working on a variety of projects. Though he entertained the idea of studying cinematography as he initially approached college, he didn’t imagine how that could actually be a career, and video production didn’t fall into his formal studies for some time despite the fact that it’s basically all he did.

Through the winding of a few major changes, he finally settled on Cinema, and once he did, couldn’t imagine anything different. 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. 

While he still enjoys the occasional setting of a full-fledged film set, where he really finds his home these days is in the stripped-down production setting of capturing normal people in the natural world in natural light, sharing their lives and stories. Exercising his skills as a Digital Media Specialist with the American Angus Association and digital marketing company Law Father over the past several years, while also developing Wild Bridge Films, 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 short 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. Derrick's highest goal is delivering videos that make the subject say "I'm very happy with how it turned out... and I enjoyed the process, too!"

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.