Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War are easily the two longest entries in the MCU to date, with the third Avengers movie coming in at 2 hours 30 minutes and its sequel clocking in at around 3 hours. When you consider just how much raw footage there was from the intensive year-long back-to-back shoot for both films, however, the time it takes to marathon the two doesn’t seem so bad.
Endgame co-editor Jeffrey Ford has revealed that a staggering 900 hours of material was shot across the pair of flicks. Ford, who worked with his fellow editor Matthew Schmidt, mentioned the shocking news to Business Insider, explaining that there was so much shot because the process of bringing the movies together was an ongoing job that spread across production on both Infinity War and Endgame.Â
“We were cutting every day, we were refining, we were figuring out what we were going to reshoot, figuring out what we had to finish. It was a constant state of pre-production, production and postproduction all at the same time for almost a year straight.”
Principal photography on the films lasted across 2017, but once that was up that didn’t mean Ford and Schmidt could kick back and rest. It sounds like their heavy workload during shooting was just cutting through the fat. It was over a four month period, including the very month that Infinity War hit theaters, that they had to put the first of the movies together for release.
“And then when we finished that year of insanity we went right into an absolutely hellish, almost impossible postproduction period that lasted from January to April when we delivered Infinity War, and that was one of the most intense periods of filmmaking I ever experienced, and I have worked on some crazy movies.”
Ford’s words are echoed by previous comments made by directors the Russo brothers, who revealed that their one big regret about making these pics is deciding to produce them back to back in the first place. The fact that 900 hours was filmed – that’s about 37.5 days! – just goes to show how hard it must’ve been to get them in shape.
So, next time you sit through Avengers: Endgame and complain about the strain it puts on your bladder, just think about the acres and acres of footage the editors must have sat through to turn it into a tiny 3-hour package for you to enjoy.
