Keep Your Eye on Jesus

Matt: 00:00:00

We are back on the Faith and Family Filmmakers podcast with a second episode, which is just gonna be a great continuation of the conversation we were having with Kristen Collier.

Matt: 00:00:10

Kristen Collier is, you can call her a lot of things.

Matt: 00:00:12

I mean, she's an English Lit, she's an author, she's an animator.

Matt: 00:00:15

I think the best description I've come up with from the first episode is Kristen is a go-getter.

Matt: 00:00:20

She's just gonna go get it.

Matt: 00:00:22

Something needs to be got, she's gonna go get it.

Matt: 00:00:24

And so I wanna learn more about that.

Matt: 00:00:26

But Kristen, thanks again for coming back for another episode, uh, here on the Faith and Family Filmmakers podcast.

Kristen: 00:00:31

Well, thank you so much, Matt.

Kristen: 00:00:32

It is a huge blessing to be able to speak to you and I have to share this.

Kristen: 00:00:36

You mentioned about me being a go-getter and, and we talked previously about the imposter syndrome and my minor is psychology in school and there's this.

Kristen: 00:00:47

I guess psychological whatever school of education that says Well, and the Bible says as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

Kristen: 00:00:56

So if you go for something and act as if it comes your way, as I mentioned previously, that we happened to be blessed to have Corbin Burnson and others in our first cartoon.

Kristen: 00:01:07

And Corbin liked the character Benny the Barnacle so much that he stayed on for the series pilot.

Kristen: 00:01:13

And I just on occasion would trade some emails with him.

Kristen: 00:01:17

And when I was looking for work, I'm also, I, I do animation part-time, but I'm also, I do marketing and like I've was a personal publicist for Robert Shepherd, for his Mardi Gras man film and also a church secretary and looking for secretarial work.

Kristen: 00:01:33

And so I asked Corbin if I could get.

Kristen: 00:01:36

A comment from him that I could use in my resume, and I wanna share this what he said.

Kristen: 00:01:41

He said, Kristen Collier is a superstar go-getter.

Kristen: 00:01:45

And I had a profoundly wonderful working experience with her.

Kristen: 00:01:48

She is relentless in all that she pursues, and the payoff is that she always gets what the project needs.

Kristen: 00:01:54

I typically don't gravitate toward the super independent rod of things, but it was because of her material persistence and great joy that I had no hesitations to put down my foolish protective measures and simply yield to her exuberance.

Kristen: 00:02:07

Anyone who works with her is blessed and so.

Kristen: 00:02:11

I share that to say that when you, as a filmmaker want to reach your fullest potential and you want to work with the people who are the best, like Corbin and Marta Kristin and Lou Graham, just be bold and be yourself and most of all, be authentic and seek excellence.

Matt: 00:02:31

And do your job well enough, even if you don't know what you're doing, do it to the level of excellence that it makes somebody like Corbin Bernson wanna come work with you Again, not just as an actor, as a voice actor, but like you say, uh, bringing him on as executive producer.

Matt: 00:02:45

And that's the thing is when you have.

Matt: 00:02:46

If you get the opportunity to work with some bigger names, I think if we approach that as not just about what, what he can do for me, but what can I do for him, how can I make his experience the best it can be?

Matt: 00:02:58

And if you do that, then people at Corbin Burnsen are gonna start opening their book to you and opening their Rolodex to you and helping you do things.

Matt: 00:03:05

but, but it sounds to me like you approach that first and foremost as I'm blessed to have him, and so I'm gonna give him the best working experience I can.

Matt: 00:03:14

And clearly he noticed that.

Kristen: 00:03:15

Yeah, I think it was Bob Irvin, the VFX animator for Mission to Mars.

Kristen: 00:03:19

I previously was connected to him via Cheryl Felicia Rhodes, who does a lot of movies and is connected to the Christian film industry.

Kristen: 00:03:27

And he was the one who said, Christians don't have the desire to compete with the mainstream.

Kristen: 00:03:32

And I thought, well, I do, and I'm not a huge fancy Disney animator, but I'm gonna try my best.

Kristen: 00:03:39

And so people like Corbin and the others, they.

Kristen: 00:03:42

Obviously appreciate authenticity like that.

Kristen: 00:03:45

And as I said previously, when you take two days to try to fix a glitch in seaweed that nobody's gonna see but yourself, the anybody appreciates that.

Kristen: 00:03:55

So that's why I say my biggest advice for any filmmaker is make it yourself because you're gonna care about your project more than anybody else does, and I look at the example of like the passion of the Christ.

Kristen: 00:04:07

Mel Gibson didn't use any special effects, but that's the best movie of all time.

Kristen: 00:04:12

And when you look at the scene with the demons, you know, they weren't like the really crazy looking, scary, gory demons

Matt: 00:04:20

look more like gray

Kristen: 00:04:21

was, it was a person.

Kristen: 00:04:22

Yeah, it was just a regular person standing there with makeup, but you knew that was a demon and that was better than anything else.

Kristen: 00:04:29

So doing it yourself is the solution, especially.

Kristen: 00:04:33

Well, I will get into King of Glory and I, I do have some breaking news for that, which I'll share a. But that's about the second coming, that story.

Kristen: 00:04:41

And as I've, uh, shared with a couple people in recent days, in 2019, I had two dreams, two nights in a row about the tribulation.

Kristen: 00:04:51

It was the same dream two nights in a row.

Kristen: 00:04:53

And I was a church secretary at the time.

Kristen: 00:04:55

And it was kind of like divergent or like those dystopian Maze runner movies where.

Kristen: 00:05:00

People are inside the big cities, like where they're walled in, in the big cities and they're trying to escape to the Midwest, the safe regions.

Kristen: 00:05:09

And I woke up the second morning and in my mind I prayed, Lord, why did you show me this?

Kristen: 00:05:14

And in my mind, God told me, because it's coming soon.

Kristen: 00:05:18

And that was in 2019.

Kristen: 00:05:20

I mean, I thought about it over the years, but now I'm really thinking about it because it's like, okay, let's say the tribulation did start during the pandemic.

Kristen: 00:05:28

That means we only have two years left, and that means we have to go for it like never before.

Kristen: 00:05:33

We can't wait for people to give us money to make our projects.

Kristen: 00:05:38

We've got to make them ourselves and be as bold as possible, and just to go all out.

Kristen: 00:05:43

I told somebody recently that.

Kristen: 00:05:45

Like, I'm a sprinter.

Kristen: 00:05:46

I was, I ran fast in grade school and I won awards and everything.

Kristen: 00:05:49

I love to run fast.

Kristen: 00:05:51

So for me to run the race that is set before us with endurance that is set before us, that's hard for me to do.

Kristen: 00:05:57

But knowing in my mind that.

Kristen: 00:05:59

Hey, we only have two years.

Kristen: 00:06:01

It's time now to sprint to the finish line.

Kristen: 00:06:03

And that excites me because I love to run fast and I can go all out for two more years.

Kristen: 00:06:08

Um, I'm not a date setter.

Kristen: 00:06:10

I had a lot of theology in college and growing up, so I'm not a date setter, but just like on ancient aliens where they say, I'm not gonna say it's aliens, but it's aliens.

Kristen: 00:06:19

I'm not gonna say that we only have two years, but there's no doubt in my mind that God gave me those dreams about.

Kristen: 00:06:25

It's the second coming, and I've had visions also of like seeing like Jesus coming out of the clouds on his white horse, and so I can't wait.

Matt: 00:06:35

Well, whether you've interpreted those dreams correctly or not, whether God just wants you to interpret it that way.

Matt: 00:06:41

Shouldn't we always live life and approach everything as if we only had two years left?

Kristen: 00:06:45

Absolutely.

Kristen: 00:06:46

And the thing is, is in King of Glory, when I say it's a supernatural love story, it's kind of like Frank Pertti's, this present darkness, but it's a love story.

Kristen: 00:06:55

So it has like the angels and demons in there and Jesus walking invisibly with the characters, which his doesn't do.

Kristen: 00:07:01

And I. Can preface that by saying that I did not write those parts gratuitously.

Kristen: 00:07:07

Like and actually this is the 20th anniversary of when it first came out, and I now just last week released it in hardcover and audiobook and my big announcement is that an indie Christian film production company is looking at it.

Kristen: 00:07:21

And so I'm super excited about that.

Kristen: 00:07:23

So what's funny is I'm now doing this book tour where it's like, okay, we, our new show, blink and Friends just came out our cartoon show with Bridgestone.

Kristen: 00:07:33

It's distributed by the world's largest Christian film distributor, Bridgestone, and it came out last October.

Kristen: 00:07:39

And you would think my focus would be that to spread the word about that, but it's like, nope, actually it's now king of glory.

Kristen: 00:07:46

It's like, why would you do a book tour on a 20-year-old book?

Kristen: 00:07:49

And it's like, because you know what?

Kristen: 00:07:51

It's time for this now.

Kristen: 00:07:52

And I say that because in March my husband had heart surgery and he got a defibrillator and like pacemaker.

Kristen: 00:08:00

It was unexpected.

Kristen: 00:08:01

So this year has been just life changing and he's doing fine and, and getting better and better every day.

Kristen: 00:08:08

But things have changed so much that now that things have settled down and he's getting his health back.

Kristen: 00:08:15

Everything in me is telling me it is time now to focus on King of Glory because I've been praying that my work would bear fruit for God.

Kristen: 00:08:23

And this is the one thing creatively I've done that's my own.

Kristen: 00:08:26

And the cartoons were all about getting Kevin's characters out there.

Kristen: 00:08:30

And now I just know it is time now for King of Glory.

Kristen: 00:08:33

There's no doubt in my mind, and the way I look at it is I'm.

Kristen: 00:08:37

I made a little graphic.

Kristen: 00:08:38

Keep your Eye on Jesus book Tour 2025 and I have King of Glory and also our show Blink and Friends and the shirt that I made with it, which is on Amazon.

Kristen: 00:08:48

So I look at it as a three-pronged approach.

Kristen: 00:08:51

Read the book.

Kristen: 00:08:52

Watch the show.

Kristen: 00:08:54

Wear the shirt in public so that you can encourage others to keep their eye on Jesus.

Kristen: 00:08:59

Because the whole thing about blink and friends, it's a red cyclops octopus, and it's cute, it's adorable.

Kristen: 00:09:05

And Blink and friends or Blink the octopus is an object lesson, like hence the giant eyeball of an octopus.

Kristen: 00:09:12

Or a cyclops.

Kristen: 00:09:13

And the whole thing is the, the theme verse for that cartoon is Keep your eye in Jesus.

Kristen: 00:09:18

Hebrews 12, two.

Kristen: 00:09:19

So the whole focus of that cartoon is to remind people to keep their eye in Jesus.

Kristen: 00:09:25

And same thing with King of Glory, having Jesus walking invisibly with the characters the same thing.

Kristen: 00:09:30

It's to remind people he's still with us right now.

Kristen: 00:09:34

And as I started to say, I did not write those parts gratuitously, but I've had a lot of theology growing up and in college.

Kristen: 00:09:41

I did better than the pre sem guys in my college theology classes.

Kristen: 00:09:45

And not that I'm super smart, but it's because I cared so much about studying God's word and learning it.

Kristen: 00:09:51

And then 20 years ago, as I was writing that book for three years back then, so like, you know, 23 years ago or whatever, I would read the gospels three times a day to our son, Jared.

Kristen: 00:10:03

So to read the Gospels three times a day, which those are the stories of Jesus, I was so immersed in Jesus.

Kristen: 00:10:10

So then basically God downloaded that story into my mind overnight, and so I was ready to write the parts about Jesus and when he downloaded that book into my mind overnight, I was sitting in a library waiting to take a test for a job, and I'd been praying for for things, and I'd heard that if you write your goals down, you're more likely to achieve them.

Kristen: 00:10:31

So I took out the only piece of paper in my purse, which was an envelope, and wrote down the back of it my goals.

Kristen: 00:10:36

And the next day that story came to me and I had never felt so close to God in my life is when I wrote it at that time.

Kristen: 00:10:42

And it took me a month to write it, and I even ended up.

Kristen: 00:10:45

I was able to meet Jim Caviezel right after The Passion came out and give him some chapters of it.

Kristen: 00:10:51

And I, you know, walked up to him and had him the chapters.

Kristen: 00:10:53

I said, I believe the Holy Ghost gave me this to write.

Kristen: 00:10:57

And it starts off with an earthquake in Turkey.

Kristen: 00:11:00

And this is 20 years ago and like two years ago, our pastor's wife said to me, well, what made you write that in there?

Kristen: 00:11:06

I said, I don't know.

Kristen: 00:11:08

So obviously the Holy Ghost knew there was gonna be an earthquake in Turkey recently.

Kristen: 00:11:12

So,

Matt: 00:11:13

That's the, I mean, telling you that's another great lesson for creatives.

Matt: 00:11:16

I, I think the general advice to keep your eye on Jesus, I'm not sure you're gonna get better advice generally speaking in life, period, but applying that to creative is a hundred percent true.

Matt: 00:11:30

Any creative who's disciplined in that and that kind of submitting your own will you, you find that we're not actually the creative ones, we're just.

Matt: 00:11:38

Channels we're just conduits.

Matt: 00:11:40

But he will absolutely put creativity that, that, that you have no capacity for whatsoever will come to you through him when that is your goal, when that is your, I guess, as Jordan Peterson says is, and when that is what you're oriented to, when your eyes are on Jesus, it's amazing what happens creatively.

Kristen: 00:11:57

Absolutely, and one other Comment is that as I was writing that, I have an English literature degree, as I said, and I love Frank Ty's, this present darkness, and I didn't want to kind of have that tone to it.

Kristen: 00:12:10

I was going for more of a Hemingway dry style journalistic style, so I didn't wanna use all the adjectives, which can tend to make it melodramatic.

Kristen: 00:12:21

I wanted the story itself to be dramatic.

Kristen: 00:12:23

And like one example in this present darkness, he writes a lot about like the talons of the demons digging into the person that it's attacking.

Kristen: 00:12:31

There's kind of a lot of that in there, and so it can be seen as being a bit melodramatic.

Kristen: 00:12:36

And so I went the opposite way and wrote it in a very understated way.

Kristen: 00:12:40

Like at the time I was reading a book called Dare to Be a Great Writer, and it encouraged you.

Kristen: 00:12:45

It said.

Kristen: 00:12:46

Think about your audience being as smart as you are, and so when you're writing for them and to write things in an understated way.

Kristen: 00:12:53

And so in the parts with the demons like taunting the people, I would have them whisper rather than the really scary, over the top description.

Kristen: 00:13:03

And it was so scary in King of Glory that one of the readers, she had to put it down for three weeks.

Kristen: 00:13:08

She was so scared.

Kristen: 00:13:09

So that.

Kristen: 00:13:10

Told me that I,

Matt: 00:13:11

You hit the.

Kristen: 00:13:12

Yeah.

Kristen: 00:13:13

And like I just got a review last week from a London born senior pastor, an author who is in Cape Town, South Africa, and he loved it.

Kristen: 00:13:23

So to me, that shows me, again, I hit the mark because one of the hallmarks of a classic is timelessness and universality.

Kristen: 00:13:32

So to me it's like, okay, if I wrote that book 20 years ago, and this author in Cape Town from London, it appealed to him.

Kristen: 00:13:42

That to me speaks to universality.

Matt: 00:13:44

Absolutely.

Matt: 00:13:45

Well, I, I wanna finish with this.

Matt: 00:13:47

This is three paragraphs.

Matt: 00:13:48

It's a lot, but I'm gonna read it anyway because I think the king of glory is where I wanna finish out.

Matt: 00:13:53

I want people to go find King of glory and we'll, we'll go into where that happens later, but I'm not sure if this is the review you're talking about it, but it's one that jumped out at me and, and really makes me want to, to dive in.

Matt: 00:14:04

But this says Kristen Collier's, king of Glory was an absolute treat, an ecclesiastical thriller.

Matt: 00:14:10

I wasn't sure what to expect.

Matt: 00:14:11

Took me a couple pages to get into the book, but once it grabbed me, it never let me go.

Matt: 00:14:16

Uh, I needed to know what would happen.

Matt: 00:14:18

Kristen has an incredible mastery of words and is wonderfully descriptive in her writing.

Matt: 00:14:23

Besides the beauty of the story, uh, I was also gaining a lesson in writing.

Matt: 00:14:27

I concur with the sentiment that Jesus lives in the pages of King of Glory.

Matt: 00:14:31

I loved out his invisible presence.

Matt: 00:14:33

Love compassion and Anger at Evil are all depicted.

Matt: 00:14:36

Uh, the book is a love story of a higher kind, revealing God's personal work in the lives and the hearts of these two couples, one whose lives are brought together by their desire to honor God, even if that means being denied love, uh, the other.

Matt: 00:14:49

Well, you'll have to read the book.

Matt: 00:14:51

The story's packed with emotion and at times, tears were close.

Matt: 00:14:54

Uh, the book is beautifully redemptive, exploring love, heartbreak, loss, pain, loneliness, and the role the father and son play in guiding, loving, protecting, and directing our paths more than a romance book the book, stop me in my tracks to help me understand sacrificial, unconditional love.

Matt: 00:15:12

I have no hesitation recommending.

Matt: 00:15:14

King of glory.

Matt: 00:15:15

So that's a glowing review if I ever heard it.

Matt: 00:15:18

So so you're in some pre-production talks, at least about how we can take King of Glory and put it on the screen.

Matt: 00:15:24

But where, where can people go find the book King of Glory and where can they contact and link up with you?

Kristen: 00:15:28

Well, King of Glory is an Amazon, and I hesitate to say we're in pre-production.

Kristen: 00:15:32

Basically, the producer is looking at it.

Matt: 00:15:35

That's, that's pre-production.

Kristen: 00:15:36

Yeah.

Kristen: 00:15:37

Oh,

Matt: 00:15:37

I will call it that.

Matt: 00:15:38

Anyway.

Kristen: 00:15:39

Okay.

Kristen: 00:15:40

Sure.

Kristen: 00:15:40

But yeah, king of Glory is on Amazon and I just released it in hardcover and audiobook.

Kristen: 00:15:45

Right now it's also on Kindle and paperback, and so as I said, I have a three-pronged approach.

Kristen: 00:15:51

King of Glory is for adults and the show Blink and Friends, which is on Encourage TV's, YouTube channel and other places that would be for kids and family.

Kristen: 00:16:02

And then our Blink and friends t-shirt that's on Amazon.

Kristen: 00:16:06

And that's just as important because like I just wore to the beach a few hours ago and when you have like keep your eyes on Jesus on a t-shirt on your back.

Kristen: 00:16:16

People see that.

Kristen: 00:16:17

And that to me is important because then it's a walking reminder for other people that you don't even know.

Kristen: 00:16:23

So that's really important to me as well.

Kristen: 00:16:25

And I'll share this a spoiler.

Kristen: 00:16:27

At the end of the novel is the second coming, and at the very end.

Kristen: 00:16:32

Jesus tells the one girl in there that God, her heavenly Father waited for her to come to him before he ended the world.

Kristen: 00:16:39

So that is my motivation, like who is that one last person out there?

Kristen: 00:16:44

And we have to do everything we can to be as bold as we can to help save that one final person.

Kristen: 00:16:50

'cause there is one.

Kristen: 00:16:52

So that's why I'm doing all this to help save people from hell.

Matt: 00:16:55

That's why the Shepherd chased the one sheep of the nine nine.

Matt: 00:16:58

Absolutely.

Matt: 00:16:59

Well, Kristen Collier, thank you so much for joining us.

Matt: 00:17:02

It's been a spirited conversation.

Matt: 00:17:04

I, everything that Corbin Bernsen said, I think rings very true.

Matt: 00:17:08

Just hearing you talk.

Matt: 00:17:09

So, where can we find you?

Matt: 00:17:10

Where can people follow you on social media?

Kristen: 00:17:12

Well, we're on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter at Collier Animation Studio.

Kristen: 00:17:17

And because our Facebook was hacked, Kevin and I just share a Facebook account and it's Kevin Scott Collier, but you'll see a picture of both of us on Facebook.

Kristen: 00:17:26

So we'd love to connect with all of you.

Kristen: 00:17:28

We definitely care deeply about making new friends who are Christians who care about media as well.

Kristen: 00:17:34

That's really important to us.

Matt: 00:17:35

That's wonderful.

Matt: 00:17:36

Well, you and I became Facebook friends just today, so I'm excited to keep up with you guys.

Matt: 00:17:40

Well, thanks so much once again for being On the podcast and we look forward to having you back sometime.

Kristen: 00:17:45

Thank you so much, Matt.

Kristen: 00:17:45

God bless you and your listeners.