Bobby Mardis became an editor for two reasons, one, he needed the money and two, he thought that it would make him a better director.  The problem was that he had no experience with editing and he needed to work on some of his own projects but was broke.  When you are short of resources, you understand quickly that you have to use your own sweat equity to get the project done. There was a company on Bronson Street in Hollywood that let Bobby use one of the rooms to edit his film called “Why Colors.” Gene, the owner set bobby up with a 16mm Movieola and a 6 plate edit desk with synch block, splicer and all the tools needed to edit.  Gene explained the process to Bobby and let him go!  In the next room over, Charles Burnett was editing one of his projects.

The first splice was always the hardest one because you really don’t know what the hell you are doing.  After a million mess-ups and do-overs, Bobby finally got the hang of it.  After the film was completed, he still needed to have the sound edited.  One day he met the proprietor of Soundbusters at a party.  They got to talking and Harry suggested to Bobby that he was open to helping him with the film and that he should come to the company on Monday morning.

Bright and early on Monday Bobby was sitting in the lobby of Soundbusters waiting for Harry.  The receptionist informed Harry that Bobby was waiting in the lobby.  She told Bobby that Harry was quite busy right now but to just wait for him and that he would get to him. Hour one, hour two, hour three and eventually the entire day was spent waiting for Harry to come out.  This happened every day as Bobby sat there impatiently waiting to be helped.  On that Friday, Harry finally came out and greeted Bobby.  He took him into the back and set him up with an Eight plate and a 35mm Movieola and a mag synch block and splicer.  Harry explained the process, and pointed to walls and walls of striped and full coat mags and said, there are all of the sound elements.  Use what you like.  You synch the picture up with the mag, make them with the wax pencil and read this sign.  There was a sign over the six-plate that read, “Try every solution possible before you come and ask me for help.”  Damn, that was enough pressure to make me turn and run.  However, the alternative was to try and find more money.  The thought of that made me sit my butt down and figure it out.  I later found out that Harry needed to see if I was serious about the craft which is why he made me wait.  Either I was a stubborn ass, ran out of options or just simply passed the test because because I feared looking for more money which was damn near impossible.  Nonetheless, I got the film edited.  I found a woman in Burbank, Joy Rencher, who became my negative cutter for the next three or four projects.

Since those days of actually touching film, nonlinear came evolved and made everyone’s life easier.  It was much faster and you didn’t have to deal with all of those elements.  It was just a computer that we had to fight with to get it done. That was great, but now I had to learn a different discipline. Damn, some more stuff to learn.  I later discovered that I would never stop learning as long as technology kept evolving.  One day I purchased an Edit system and placed it in my living room.  it was called Premiere.  I learned the process and also learned that I like Final Cut a little better.  In fact, the first ten projects that I cut were other people’s projects that I cut for free.  I needed the pressure of a real project to cut by a finite time limit but told them that they couldn’t bug me for “X” period of time.  The truth was, I needed time to learn how to cut on that nonlinear system. Many days and nights were spent editing, learning, making mistakes, editing, learning, auditioning for acting roles, and back to editing. I delivered the first project and felt like I just discovered America.  After completing nine more projects, I was ready to charge $100 per day to edit.  that is how I made money to pay my rent.  As an actor, the parts were far and few in between and rent was always due on the first.  (The nerve of those landlords. Charging a future star rent!). My rate slowly increased to $500.00 a day when I could get it.  Because I was an actor, I cut tons of actor reals for dirt cheap because most actors didn’t have much money. At the time, only 3% of the actors in SAG made a living acting.  They did other things to pay there rent but kept hope alive!  Not much has changed because now there is Lift, Uber and don’t for get Starbucks.

I have moved up in the edit world but not I only edit my own documentaries, EPK’s and specialty projects.  When I direct narrative projects, I usually like to find an editor because they can add a different perspective to the project.  I collect the footage as a director and tell them, “Here, now you tell me what you think.”  Terri Schopshire is one of my favorite editors who is absolutely great and one of the nicest people in the world.  In 2023, Bobby Edited four shows for the HBCUgo Network in 2023. He is currently editing a web series for himself to jump out in webworld.

Lastly, being an editor helps me to be a better director.  I am forced to edit in my mind when I am shooting, therefore capturing what is needed on the set so that it translates to an emotional scene in the edit bay late at night when the shooting is done.  I figured that one can’t edit footage that is not there to digitize and put into the system.  You gain and certain sense of composition and story when you are also an editor.