Oscar O’Neill Shahapurkar is a Los Angeles–based production designer working across film, TV, commercials, and new media.
Oscar O’Neill Shahapurkar
Oscar O’Neill Shahapurkar’s career reflects the changing contours of contemporary production design-an expanding discipline shaped by global movement, evolving formats, and shifting audience habits. Based in Los Angeles and trained across India and the United States, Oscar O’Neill works as a Production Designer and Art Director across film, television, commercials, live events, and emerging narrative media, positioning his practice at the intersection of traditional cinematic craft and new-age storytelling platforms.
Originally from Mumbai, Oscar O’Neill’s early engagement with visual storytelling began through formal training in production design at Whistling Woods International. His initial professional exposure came through large-scale Indian television and reality formats, including high-pressure productions such as Bigg Boss and Fear Factor. These environments, defined by scale, speed, and constant public visibility, provided an early understanding of logistical complexity and collaborative execution-skills that would later translate across international production systems.
Seeking to deepen his design practice within a narrative-driven framework, Oscar O’Neill moved to the United States to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Production Design at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. At AFI, the discipline is approached through architectural logic, historical research, and character psychology, emphasizing production design as a storytelling tool rather than a decorative function. The training reinforced an approach grounded in intention, where visual environments are constructed to support narrative meaning and emotional rhythm.
Following his graduate studies, Oscar O’Neill began working in the U.S. film and television industry, contributing to projects operating under union-regulated production structures. His work on Apple TV+’s The Morning Show placed him within a large-scale prestige television environment, working under Production Designer Nelson Coates and Set Decorator Cal Loucks. The experience involved navigating continuity, realism, and visual restraint across a long-form series-an exercise in maintaining narrative cohesion rather than visual spectacle.
Alongside scripted content, Oscar O’Neill’s career has extended into international commercial campaigns and documentary-driven branded series. Projects involving globally recognized figures such as Manny Pacquiao and Allen Iverson required a design approach that balanced cinematic language with real-world identity and brand context. In such settings, the art department's role shifts toward subtle environmental storytelling-supporting authenticity without overshadowing the subject.
His portfolio also includes live music events featuring internationally known recording artists. Designing for live performance introduces a different set of challenges, where environments must remain visually legible at scale while responding to the immediacy of performance and audience interaction. These projects operate at the intersection of architecture, stage design, and experiential storytelling, expanding the traditional boundaries of production design.
One of the more distinctive aspects of Oscar O’Neill’s work lies in his early involvement with vertically formatted narrative series. Designed for mobile-first audiences, vertical storytelling challenges conventional cinematic grammar, requiring designers to rethink composition, blocking, and spatial hierarchy. Oscar O’Neill has worked extensively as an Art Director within this format, including on The Road Between Us, a vertically oriented narrative series created by the creator of CSI and produced by GammaTime, a Miramax-affiliated company. His engagement with the format predates its wider adoption, placing him among designers who adapted early to emerging narrative structures.
In narrative short films, Oscar O’Neill has taken on senior design responsibilities supported by institutional and curated platforms. His work on The Apple Picker’s Son required recreating the visual and emotional landscape of Kashmir within Los Angeles. Through controlled use of texture, color palette, and spatial composition, he transformed local locations into a believable stand-in for a region defined by memory, conflict, and displacement. The project demonstrated how production design can translate cultural specificity across geography without relying on literal replication
Across formats, Oscar O’Neill’s approach is marked by adaptability rather than a fixed visual signature. His work reflects an understanding that contemporary production designers must operate across multiple platforms, production models, and audience expectations. Whether designing for prestige television, mobile narratives, or live performance, the emphasis remains on clarity of space, narrative intent, and collaboration.
As the entertainment industry continues to evolve beyond traditional boundaries, Oscar O’Neill Shahapurkar’s career offers a snapshot of a generation of designers working fluidly across cultures and formats-shaping environments that respond not only to story, but to how stories are now seen.
IMDB link: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11968474/
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