Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame Were Cut from Over 900 Hours of Footage: It Was 'Insanity'

Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame are two of Hollywood’s biggest movies — and the hardest to condense into watchable films audiences could enjoy.

While directors Joe and Anthony Russo were filming the two movies back-to-back, they were collaborating with film editors Jeffrey Ford and Matthew Schmidt to edit them as filming was taking place.

What ended being almost six hours of combined movies was cut down from over 900 hours of footage.

“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,” Ford told Business Insider. “It was a constant state of preproduction, production and postproduction all at the same time for almost a year straight.”

Ford continued, “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.”

His credits include other Marvel movies such as Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Ford couldn’t have done it without his editing partner, Schmidt, who began to piece together Endgame as Ford wrapped up editing on Infinity War.

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“It was a massive amount of footage with three, sometimes four units working every day pumping out material,” Ford said. “And I’m not even including the motion-capture footage. But if you do a bit at a time, you can get through it.”

What they ended up creating was a massive blockbuster hit that has earned $2.4 billion worldwide since its release on April 26.

Avengers: Endgame is now in theaters.