How ‘Ink’ Production Designers Recreated The Sun Newsroom Using Functional Linotype Machines, Working Rotary Phones and Old Typewriters — SkimNews
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- Danny Boyle's film "Ink" traces Rupert Murdoch's rise and The Sun's 1969 Fleet Street takeover, premiering at the London Film Festival, opening in select theaters Dec. 11, and streaming on Netflix Jan. 8 in the U.S. and Latin America.
- Production designers Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl rebuilt the 1969 newsroom in a vacant Bromley, U.K. council building after the original Bouverie Street Sun headquarters was demolished, working with Fleet Street veterans to map the daily copy-deadline flow.
- Set decorator Ben Barrington Groves secured three fully functional Linotype machines — described as "priceless" with "very, very few left in the world" — by convincing "someone who had an obsession with hot metal printing" to loan them.
- Larry Lamb's office was built with gridded glass windows to visualize his increasing isolation, and a working rotary phone that delivered real sales numbers when actors picked it up.
- The tube sequence used a single period-appropriate train near Watford (part of a museum), wind machines, flying newspapers, and fast-moving bar lights from lighting designer Steve Mackie to simulate a train rushing at "a million miles an hour."
- McColl and Pugh smoked "two packets of cigarettes" on set to make the newsroom smell authentic, and Boyle deployed a 360-degree camera for pivotal sequences including the kidnapping of Muriel Mackay.
Why it matters: On a low budget, Boyle's team turned period-authenticity constraints into creative ammunition — sourcing extinct hot-metal Linotype machines, persuading museum curators to lend a Watford tube carriage, and even smoking the set to layer in cigarette smell — delivering a tactile 1969 newsroom that CGI cannot replicate.
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