Pixcel, Northbrook

With the advent of the digital age, calling movies “films” is becoming increasingly inaccurate, and Pixcel is at the forefront of this media shift. The digitization business started as a research project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign focused on bringing old media to the modern world. That was more than a decade and five Fast and the Furious sequels ago. Nowadays, Pixcel has established a name for itself outside the academic sphere, digitizing not only family memorabilia, but massive archives for the Joffrey Ballet, the Arizona Department of Transportation, and the United States Geological Society. They transform analog formats—such as tape, film and photos—into digital HD files, which they can store on everything from DVDs to external hard drives.