As a company founded by filmmakers, we were thrilled when Ross McElwee approached us to remaster his 1986 film, Sherman's March. The film, shot on 16mm film and recorded on a Nagra SN by McElwee, was originally supposed to be about general William Tecumseh Sherman's march through the south. Instead, it turned into a meditation on love, religion and nuclear war.
We scanned the film from the original A/B roll color negative at 4k HDR on our Lasergraphics ScanStation. It was re-assembled it to include material that had been previously removed from a DVD edition due to length (the film runs almost 3 hours), then color corrected and digitally restored under the filmmaker's supervision.
We recently presented the film at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and it was truly beautiful to behold. Sherman’s March will eventually be given a “documentary classic” release in the US, and will proudly bear a credit thanking Gamma Ray Digital for its fine work.
Ross McElwee, Filmmaker
Early 1980s 16mm color negative like that used on Sherman's March could be very grainy, especially in low light or available-light conditions. The ScanStation excels at capturing all of the chunkiness of that grain in great detail, which, from an archival perspective, we think is extremely important.
Copies of the final 4k DPX files were delivered to the Library of Congress.