ELSEWHERE 

2021| Short Film / Installation (Black-and-White, 10 min)

Created as Simon S. O’Reilly’s MFA thesis, Elsewhere (10 min, black-and-white) meditates on grief, memory, and transformation. Set against a wintry shoreline, the film uses a tactile, textural visual language and a deliberate absence of dialogue to immerse viewers in a liminal state between reality and imagination. The installation pairs the film with the original costume featured in its production, displayed as a sculptural artifact after the screening. This physical presence deepens the work’s themes, creating a bridge between cinematic imagery and material object, and offering viewers a moment of encounter beyond the moving image.

PULSAR 

2016 | Experimental Short Film / In-Camera Light Experiments

Pulsar follows an unnamed figure attempting to ease anxiety through the use of LED therapy glasses, a device that delivers pulsating light at programmed intervals. Initially intended to soothe, the experience quickly escalates into a sensory transformation, where fractured reflections and bursts of color reshape the figure’s perception of reality. Crafted entirely through in-camera techniques—using LED glasses, broken glass filters, and light refraction—the short blends science-fiction, horror, and the mystical into a compact, disorienting journey. Produced in 2016 during O’Reilly’s first year at Concordia University, Pulsar was presented at the Fantasia Film Festival in 2017 alongside The Harvest, the two works together earning the Fantasia Film Award.

THE HARVEST 

2017 | Short Film / Prosthetics & Sci-Fi Drama

The Harvest (no dialogue) unfolds in a snowbound mountain town, where a father and daughter share an isolated life of ice fishing and quiet routine. Their bond is tested when meteorites fall from the sky, bringing with them an invasive presence that takes root within the daughter. Using extensive prosthetic work and stylized, low-budget sci-fi design, the film externalizes an unseen internal threat—turning it into a physical entity that must be confronted and removed. At once a surreal tale of transformation and a portrait of familial connection under siege, The Harvest blends intimacy with the uncanny. Premiering at the Fantasia Film Festival in 2017, the work received the Fantasia Film Award and is presented here alongside Pulsar.

THRILLER BLUSH

2018 | Motion Capture Animation & 3D-Printed Sculpture

Thriller Blush originates from a motion-capture performance, transformed into a stylized 3D digital sculpture through Blender animation. This virtual figure, rendered with a distinctive physicality, appears in a looping video installation and as a 3D-printed object packaged in the format of an “art toy.” The pairing invites viewers to consider how digital movement can be reinterpreted as static form, and how physical artifacts can extend the life of virtual creations. Shown here with Pink Monk, Thriller Blush reflects O’Reilly’s interest in the interplay between screen-based imagery and tangible objects.

PINK MONK

2018 | Keyframe Animation & 3D-Printed Sculpture

In Pink Monk, O’Reilly shifts from motion capture to keyframe animation, creating a digital figure whose movements are slow, deliberate, and meditative. The animation is paired with a miniature 3D-printed version of the character, echoing the packaging style of Thriller Blush. Together, the screen-based and sculptural elements highlight different temporalities of digital embodiment, inviting viewers to reflect on the translation of form between virtual and physical states.

SKETCH: VIRTUAL CAMPAIGN

2018 | 3D Environment / Looping Animation (with optional 3D Glasses)

In Virtual Campaign, O’Reilly constructs a pared-down 3D environment populated by a solitary figure and a series of enigmatic structures. Minimal in palette and pacing, the work invites sustained looking rather than narrative progression. Shown as a looping installation, it can be experienced with or without stereoscopic 3D glasses, offering viewers an optional shift in perceptual depth. The piece reflects the artist’s interest in digital environments as spaces for contemplation rather than spectacle.

SKETCH: VIRTUAL BLEEP

2019 | Motion Capture Experiment / Depth-Map Animation

Virtual Bleep emerged from experiments with iPi Soft motion-capture software during the making of Frontier. A dancer’s performance was captured and rendered as a shifting, depth-map figure—its contours glowing, glitching, and moving with a spirited unpredictability. While the process was deeply technical, the result carries a buoyant energy: part choreography, part data visualization, and part mischievous apparition. This early exploration of motion capture foreshadows O’Reilly’s ongoing engagement with virtual performance as a site of transformation and play.

SKETCH: SQUADRON

2019 | Motion Capture Animation / NPC Idle Study

Conceived from the motion-capture and character-building process of Frontier, Squadron assembles a line of non-playable characters in a sparse, virtual holding space. Each figure, animated from recorded performer data, exhibits idle gestures and hints of awareness—fidgets, glances, micro-movements that suggest they might spring to life at any moment. Removed from their original game-world context, these NPCs become endearingly aimless, an ambient choreography of waiting that blends digital puppetry with a dash of playful absurdity.

SKETCH: EASTER (HEAD & BODY)

2020 | Looping Animation / Line Drawing Experiments

These two short video works transform still drawings into moving compositions through After Effects animation. Minimal in form but rich in rhythm and color, they function as textural studies and open-ended visual experiments. Presented as loops, the sketches may be displayed together or intercut with other exploratory works, underscoring the role of small-scale experimentation in O’Reilly’s broader practice.

FIRES (UNTITLED BURNING HOMES)

Video Installation / Visual Effects Reconstruction

Untitled (Fires, Burning Homes) repurposes footage O’Reilly originally created as commissioned visual effects for another production. In this new work, the images are reclaimed and reframed, transforming their original narrative context into a personal and political meditation. Rural Quebec houses, chapels, and farmsteads—emblematic of French colonial settlement—burn one by one, their destruction echoing the historical reality of the British takeover of French lands in Quebec.

The montage unfolds like a slow-burning memory: intact landscapes give way to fires that spread from one building to the next. Repetition erases individuality—each home becomes another ruin—while the sequencing mirrors the fragmentary nature of historical memory. Though rooted in digital fabrication, the work resists spectacle, using its cinematic artifice to evoke loss, erasure, and the dismantling of community. By the end, only emptied fields and shorelines remain—an enduring absence.

FLORIDA (UNTITLED: THE SOUND OF PINK WATER)

Experimental Film / Infrared Landscape & Soundscape

Untitled (The Sound of Pink Water) is an experimental moving-image work shot with an infrared-modified camera, revealing a false-color spectrum normally hidden from human sight. Wetlands, mangroves, and urban waterways are rendered in luminous shades of pink, while birds, alligators, and vegetation appear in spectral tones that feel both familiar and alien. The visuals are paired with an immersive soundscape composed from contact-microphone field recordings—capturing the subtle vibrations of water, plant life, and passing wildlife. Together, image and sound create a hallucinatory portrait of Florida’s landscapes, where the boundaries between the real and the imagined dissolve.

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY SERIES

Photography / Everyday 

Shot over several years in streets, subways, and public gathering places, this photographic series focuses on unguarded moments between strangers. The lens captures tourists arranging themselves for selfies, passersby in conversation, commuters in states of private absorption. The resulting images form an unspoken narrative about presence, spectacle, and the small performances we enact in public. By framing these moments without intervention, the series becomes both a social document and a meditation on contemporary rituals of self-representation.

THE LAST WONDERLAND (WORK-IN-PROGRESS)

Game Prototype / Interactive Environmental Narrative

The Last Wonderland is an ongoing conceptual project developed in Unreal Engine. The game centers on a young protagonist in a fictional Isfahan, tasked with preserving the city’s endangered environment. Players explore richly textured neighborhoods, gardens, and waterways, meeting a cast of eccentric locals and activists whose stories unfold through performance-captured dialogue and gesture. The project combines environmental storytelling with interactive world-building, weaving ecological urgency into an open-world journey. This work-in-progress offers a glimpse into a larger narrative where architecture, folklore, and activism intersect in playable form.

GHOST IN THE LOOP

Collaborative Short Film / Live Action + Miniatures + VFX

Ghost in the Loop emerged from a collaborative teaching project, blending professional production methods with student-led experimentation. The short film combines live-action performances with miniature set photography, digital compositing, and visual effects to construct an uncanny narrative space. Through its mix of scales and mediums, the work explores the ghostly afterimages left by technology—traces that persist even when their source has moved on. As a work-in-progress, it reflects an evolving dialogue between pedagogy, technical craft, and shared authorship.

Neon Burger (Animated) — “Reveling in the Chaos of a Night Without Consequence”

Digital Illustration Series / Midjourney-Animated Loop

 Neon Burger (Animated) began as digital illustrations inspired by posts of revelry and excess. This test animation extends those drawings into motion using Midjourney-generated frames assembled as a seamless loop. The palette leans synthetic—electric signage, lacquered counters, glossy wrappers—while small, repeating actions (a flicker, a breath of steam, a sidelong glance) sustain a steady hum of attention. Guided by the prompt “Reveling in the Chaos of a Night Without Consequence,” the work treats spectacle and appetite as a rhythm: seductive, circular, and unresolved. As a proof-of-concept, it explores how AI can amplify hand-led composition while keeping the scene open, glowing, and just past midnight.

HIDDEN VALLEY (FEATURE SCREENPLAY)

Screenplay Installation & AI Table Read

Conceived as a process-based presentation of a feature screenplay, Hidden Valley combines visual development materials (beat boards, annotated pages, and archival references) with a companion AI-voiced table read. The audio—performed by synthetic actors using ElevenLabs—plays in loopable segments, allowing visitors to enter the narrative at any point and weave their own path across text, sound, and image. Drawing on an archive of 1940s Air Force negatives, the script traces two friends through landscapes of decline and fragile wonder, blending slow cinema sensibilities with restrained magical realism. By staging screenplay, boards, and AI-performed dialogue together, the installation explores how a film can be experienced before it is made—through rhythm, tone, and the unfinished allure of development.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography Series / Film Production Process

 This series of behind-the-scenes photographs spans multiple productions, from independent shorts to larger collaborative projects. O’Reilly’s lens turns toward the often-invisible labor of filmmaking: camera crews in cramped sets, actors caught in moments of rest, and the quiet architecture of lights, cables, and improvised rigs. These images form a parallel narrative to the finished works, revealing the physical and collaborative processes that shape moving images.

POTTERY & INCENSE COLLABORATION

Ceramic Installation / Sensory Collaboration

 These ceramic incense jars emerged from O’Reilly’s recent explorations in pottery and an ongoing collaboration with his father, an incense artist. Each vessel is wheel-thrown, glazed, and fired to create a form that both stores and transforms the scent of incense over time—allowing it to deepen and mature like a ferment. The installation combines visual, tactile, and olfactory experience, extending O’Reilly’s interest in cross-disciplinary practice and the ways sensory perception can shape memory.

ELSEWHERE & OTHER FRAGMENTS

Marketing Materials

Pegasus Gallery - Middletown, CT

September 15 - October 27, 2025

Images |  Website