“I have always been inspired by contrasts. Intimate, human stories set against expansive worlds – the personal and the epic. For me, the juxtaposition of these worlds incites a central question: what happens when the ‘ordinary’ collides with the ‘fantastic’?

This foundational curiosity has fueled my interests in mediums like performance capture, virtual production, CG animation and real-time engines. Each of these represent fusions between the real world and the fantastic – collisions of technology and storytelling.”

Brien has focused his directorial work at the intersection of actor performance and CGI. Whether directing Nathan Fillion and Mike Colter as Spartan super-soldiers for Microsoft, or Sam Jackson as a foul-mouthed, A.I. for The Video Game Awards, Brien always seeks to balance the incredible amount of pre-vis and planning that accompany VFX, CG and Virtual Productions with spontaneous, on-set, actor performances.

For HALO 4 and 5, Brien directed more than 120 minutes of both real-time and pre-rendered cinematics, completing virtual production, post and VFX work in the US, Poland, Hungary and the UK. Brien has been a panelist at San Diego Comicon, had his work featured as an official selection for Siggraph’s Electronic Theater and been nominated twice by the Visual Effects Society for Outstanding Real-Time Visuals in a Video Game and Outstanding Visuals in a Real-Time Project.

Brien is currently in-development and attached to direct the recently announced, GROUNDED animated series, based on the popular video game from Microsoft and Obsidian Entertainment.