Past Forward Studio is run by Lauren and Helmut, a husband-and-wife team based in the San Fernando Valley. We started the business the way a lot of small businesses start: by needing it ourselves. We had our own boxes of old home videos we wanted digitized, and couldn't find an option that checked all our boxes: local, fast, and handled in person by someone we could actually trust with our family's memories.

So we built that option ourselves. Since summer 2025, we've been digitizing tapes and discs for families across the San Fernando Valley and surrounding areas, and it's been genuinely rewarding work. There's nothing quite like handing someone back a memory they thought they'd lost. We're looking forward to continuing to grow right here in our local community, one box of tapes at a time.

By day, Helmut works as an aerospace engineer, studying how materials degrade and fail over decades of use. It turns out that's not so different from what happens to a VHS tape sitting in a closet for thirty years. When he's not doing rocket science, he brings that same care and attention to preserving your family's memories.