Kris McDonald is a Creative Director and Senior Editor at XAV, and the founder of Behind the Trailer — a free educational platform dedicated to helping aspiring trailer editors break into the business and level up their craft. He came up through Open Road and Trailer Park before landing at XAV (which was Project X at the time), where he's built a career cutting campaigns for major studio and streaming titles including The Chosen, The Big Cigar, and Deepwater Horizon.
In this episode, Kris traces his path from runner to creative director, reflects on the mentors and moments that shaped him, and pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to cut a trailer that makes an audience stop breathing.
Key Takeaways
Say yes to everything — even the soccer video. Early in his career, Kris was asked to cut a highlight reel for a client's daughter's graduation party. He treated it like a studio campaign, stayed late, and poured everything into it. The client loved it, sat him down in the bay, and introduced him to the work of Nick Temple. The lesson: every cut is an audition.
Set a goal, then chase it down. After learning that his mentor Adrian finished his first trailer at 25, Kris made it a personal mission to hit that same milestone. He cut constantly, studied obsessively, and hit the mark — finishing his first trailer on The Blind Side right around his 25th birthday.
Emotion, story, rhythm — in that order. Kris breaks down the three pillars he builds every cut around, drawn from Walter Murch's In the Blink of an Eye. A trailer can be slick and fast and technically impressive, but without emotion, it doesn't land.
Trial and error is the process. When asked about a gut-punch moment of silence in the Deepwater Horizon trailer, Kris was refreshingly honest: he knew what he wanted the audience to feel, but finding the right technique was pure experimentation. Knowing the destination and figuring out the route are two different skills.
Behind the Trailer exists to pay it forward. Everything Kris knows, he learned because someone in a bay was willing to show him their sequences and give him notes. Behind the Trailer is his way of making that kind of mentorship available to anyone who wants it — for free.
