(April 22, 2025)
Mark Nicholas is an attorney with a background in real estate. He is the owner of Manhattan Beach Studios. It has a large campus at 1600 Rosecrans Ave in Manhattan Beach (https://mbsmediacampus.com/), with 15 sound stages, a streaming & broadcasting stage, and a “New York Street” for recording commercial and entertainment events.
Mark spoke about the importance of archiving our family history for the next generation. His grandparents were Holocaust & Ukrainian survivors whose history was lost, and his parents passed away without archiving their photos & records for future generations. The current generation produces an ever-increasing volume of smart-phone photos and videos, most of which will soon vanish without being sorted, reviewed, or organized. The content is viewed as immediate and social, with diminishing relevance after being posted. Storage space is limited, especially for videos. Lack of planning and non-diligent recipients exacerbate the difficulty in historical preservation.
Problems with digital preservation include PDFs, which are not valid for wills, and without a registry are easily faked, manipulated, and lost. Online storage is preserved only temporarily. Preserving legacy requires sorting and transferring meaningful histories and stories, scanning what is not photographed, and determining proper storage for viewing and sharing. Consider what is important to you, to whom will it be important in the future, how it will be shared (what media), and what will happen after passing.
For effective solutions, Mark recommends digital or cloud storage, and commercial services like Flikr, YouTube and prints or printed books. Information links can facilitate sharing family historical information. Digital planning can provide broad access and avoiding depending on individual trustees and designees.
Mark Nicholas encourages us to consider his services for collecting and sorting our family information for professional archiving. He is available at 310-666-6676 or markn@manhattanbeachstudios.net. For more information, see www.manhattanbeachstudios.net.