What it’s REALLY Like to Work as a Trailer Editor | Chris MacDonald Interview

Trailer editing is an art form in itself within the editing industry, but what’s it like to work professionally in this role? And what skills do you need to develop on the way for this?

Before he became lead trainer at Film Editing Pro, Chris MacDonald worked as a Hollywood Trailer Editor at major studios such as Universal Pictures, Sony, Disney and Paramount.

He answers these questions and many more in an interview last year, where he discussed his career as an editor. The full video is worth a watch, but here are some key takeaways.

Work starts before the movie finishes

You might assume that trailer editors receive a fresh, completed copy of the movie to cut into a trailer, but often that’s not how things work. When working on a trailer early in production, Chris explains:

You might not actually watch the whole movie because it’s probably not fully shot yet. So you might be watching some watered down, weird version that has slugs (placeholder clips) up that says ‘Batman defeats Superman’…I’d like to see that part, but it’s not available to watch yet!

The scale and complexity of film production means that trailer editors have to begin work with incomplete movies, so you’ll need to have a good relationship with production to understand what these missing shots convey, and creative vision to imagine how they could fit into your trailer.

You’re only as good as your breakdown

Whatever state the movie arrives to you in, you’ll probably start your trailer edit by completing a breakdown of the movie. But Chris makes it clear that this is more than simply watching the movie and jotting down a few notes:

You really just do type out every single line in the movie. You type the name of the character, space, hyphen, space – What did they say? And you do (repeat) that. It takes eight to 10 hours. It’s forever.

Why go through this long process?

As you’re doing that, you’re getting ideas and you’re getting really intimately familiar with exactly how the story flows, and what people say. And you’re thinking, ‘oh, this moment up here, that would be a great setup for this huge set piece of action that occurs way later’.

It’s a lot of work, but it forces you to get to know the details of the movie, which will trigger the ideas that make up the starting point of your trailer.

Just Start!

Once you’ve completed your breakdown, do you need to have an idea for the whole trailer to start cutting it together?

A lot of times people will just start with whatever inspires them when they’re cutting a trailer. Like…’I have a really cool idea for a montage at the back!’. Well start with that, edit that, stick it in another timeline.

Instead of having everything planned, just cutting together a few parts of a trailer from ideas you may have (Chris refers to them as ‘constructs’), you can build up a selection of clips to edit together.

And the more of those that you get, the more that it starts to look like a trailer when you put it on one timeline.

Be your own producer

Is there one trait that will elevate your work above other editors? Chis answers:

Becoming an editor that can self-produce, and then is willing to give yourself unbiased, objective notes…that’s a real challenge. And I think that’s a sign of maturity and professionalism. 

Self-awareness and critiquing your own work also means that you can’t fall into the trap of thinking…

I’m going to have to be the one to do that if I decide that that’s what should be done.

Being unbiased means making the creative decisions that will benefit the edit the most, even if it requires a lot more work from you.

Wrap Up

A trailer editor can be a unique and fulfilling role within the industry. If you’re looking to get into or improve your trailer editing skills, check out FEP’s course ‘The Art of Trailer Editing‘,  a step by step course from Chris and other pro Hollywood editors.