Analog media formats like film and videotape are how vast amounts of the movie industry’s history have been stored. But those formats have a shelf life, and if not kept in the right conditions, they could have their lives cut short.
However, inside the former Farm Credit Bank Building in downtown Wichita, lies a laboratory where films are being restored to their former glory. Here, a frame of film is not just worth a thousand words, but approximately 17 megabytes of server space.
“I mean, film lasts a long time, but it doesn’t last forever, and tape lasts even less amount of time than film does,” Shawn Rhodes said. “So if you don’t digitize it, you’re going to lose that film or video, which you know, if you look at museums, that could be our human history of the United States of America for the last 150 years.”
Rhodes is the director of digital Services of the U.S. division of R3store Studios. This division was purchased in 2024 by Underground Vaults & Storage, which is based in the salt mines in Hutchinson. Dan Reisig, who is the vice president of technology for UV&S, said that the same six families have owned the company since 1959 and that their field is very specialized…