The New York Post — and its cluttered desks — is getting its close-up. “Brain on Fire,” out Friday on Netflix, is based on the memoir of the same name by Post reporter Susannah Cahalan (played in the film by Chloë Grace Moretz) and her battle with a rare autoimmune disease, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, which began to show bizarre behavioral symptoms during her job as a newspaper journalist.
Ross Dempster, production designer for the film, tells The Post about the process of assembling the newsroom set to authentically replicate the bustling atmosphere of The Post’s actual offices. First, director Gerard Barrett visited the paper’s Midtown Manhattan office during his research, and took photos for Dempster to help him get the look and feel of the place just right.
“I asked him for specific shots such as people’s desk ‘dressing,’ filing systems and general stuff around the office, as well as signage and anything else I thought might be useful,” he says. “My decorator, Shirley Inget, and I used the pictures as a constant reference when purchasing items for the set, adding small touches such as special coffee mugs and what type of paperwork might be on the desks. What might they be reading? Lots and lots of detail so we could see the layering of years of work and toil from the journalists.”
Dempster says one of the most important aspects to get across was the history of the newsroom: “This is a working office with many people coming in and out over many years — literally a hub of information. So to make ours look real, it was essential for those layers of time and character to come across to the audience.”
To that end, he secured permission from the paper to use images of some of The Post’s most famous front pages — framed on the walls around the office — on the “Brain on Fire” set.
Since Cahalan’s story takes place in 2009, Dempster says it was also important to track down office furniture that looked right for that time period.
“We tried to find [computer] screens that were appropriate for the era — slightly thicker, and not so techie looking as we have today — and even old typewriters stacked up in one area. So, again, we could show the history of the office and where it had evolved over time,” he says. “Desk colors were chosen specifically to blend with the era, as well as create an overall color palette that matched the location, but without it appearing too drab for camera.” And, of course, “we used the red line signature feature of The Post on the walls to frame the hub inside of it.”
He says he opted not to interview The Post reporters themselves for research, however, for one specific reason: “The movie is so centered around Susannah’s perspective that we decided to keep with her own story of her experiences and her everyday working days. We created the world around her as she could describe it to us.”
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