Brian Adler

Brian Adler has been a leading entertainment technologist, EP/producer, VFX supervisor and business development consultant for over 20 years. He is regarded as one of the industry’s leading authorities on creative technology innovation, including 3D and 4D digital capture and generative AI and is a trusted director of AAA talent for digi-double character creation in film, TV and games. Through his P R O T A G O N banner, he was a technology partner at the Technicolor Experience Center before selling his photo-realistic digital character capture system to Activision.

On the production side, he produced the indie feature film comedy, Adult Interference, starring Ted Welch and Kate Upton, and was Executive Producer and VFX Supervisor on the 2022 international epic The Legend of Maula Jatt, which set box office records for a South Asian film.

Adler is at the forefront of virtual production and AI filmmaking. As both and an EP and Creative Director, he has overseen teams and budgets spanning traditional film production and emerging technologies, from gaussian splats for Unreal-based pre-viz, to visual lip sync dubbing for localized language content, to machine learning workflows and other AI-assisted pre-production (art, budgeting, production management), production, post and VFX pipelines.

Adler served as production and VFX consultant for Scott Free Productions’ and AMC’s The Terror , based on Dan Simmons’ best-selling novel. His clients include technology providers and every major studio and television network, video game publishers and visual effects studios. Brian’s recent credits include titles such as Warner Bros’ Superman: Legacy,  Amazon’s Project Hail Mary, Marvel’s Wonder Man and Netflix’s The Boroughs. In addition to his work in tech and entertainment, Adler has been commissioned by renowned artists such as Urs Fischer and museums like Atturaif Living Museum in Arabia, for whom Adler offers digital creative services and fine art fabrication.

As EP, Adler has overseen commercial campaigns for some of the world’s leading consumer brands such as Nokia, Bridgestone, Cadillac, Hewlett Packard and Burger King and music videos for Will Smith, Mary J. Blige, Ludacris, and Duran Duran. He was a VFX supervisor on the Jackie Chan – Jet Li kung fu actioner, Forbidden Kingdom , and was nominated for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Music Video by the Visual Effects Society (VES) and oversaw effects on Future Lovers, Madonna’s Confessions Tour show opener, a colossal multi-screen video directed by acclaimed fashion photographer Steven Klein, lensed by Oscar® winning DP Janusz Kaminski, with wardrobe by Jean Paul Gaultier. Brian directed the CG animated commercial, Mom, for Wal-Mart, via Bernstein Rein Advertising and has produced and directed live shows, webcasts and music videos for artists like CeeLo and branded content for Yahoo!, game titans Electronic Arts, Square Enix and Activision/Blizzard. As a director and photographer, he helmed a series of award-winning pharma campaigns via Eevolver and FCB NY and is a regular judge for the Broadcast Design Association (BDA) and the Visual Effects Society (VES).

A graduate of the University of Michigan’s Cinema & Television program, where his short film, Maxey Boys, was awarded best student film, Brian began his career working for New Line Cinema in New York and George Lucas’ Industrial Light + Magic, in Marin County, CA. It was at ILM where he began his foray into visual effects, learning the ropes on groundbreaking features The Mas , Casper and Forrest Gump and commercials for Nike, Energizer and more.

After college, Brian was selected to Turner Broadcasting’s T-2000, a management training program designed to groom the company’s future leaders. Adler worked directly with senior executives in every major business division, from marketing to production to finance, writing strategic business plans to leverage Turner assets and form internal alliances among business divisions (TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Sports, Publishing, Interactive).

Adler is a Chicago native and a resident of Los Angeles, CA. He can be reached at brian@protagonpix.com.