Since the late 1990s, McDonald has directed dozens of film and television productions; he completed shooting "The Tracey Fragments" (2006) in Toronto, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. While shooting the scenes took him only two weeks, he spent nine months in post-production. He then directed the horror film "Pontypool", which was selected as one of the best Canadian films of 2008 by the Toronto International Film Festival and was released in March 2009. Since then, he has directed episodes of many television series, including "Lonesome Dove", "Twitch City", "", "Instant Star", "Queer as Folk", "ReGenesis", "This Is Wonderland" and "Cracked".