The Interview: Intro to Premiere Pro

Topics Covered in This Premiere Pro Tutorial:

Importing Files, Organizing the Project, Creating a Sequence, the Editing Workspace, Timecode

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

In this exercise you will start working on a very common task for the video editor, the one-person on camera interview. In this project the speaker (Dan Rodney) gives a short explanation of his background in design, how the industry is changing, and some of the software that designers use.

Previewing the Final Video

1. Let’s see a preview of what you’ll be making. If you’re in Premiere Pro, keep it open but switch to your Desktop.

2. On the Desktop, navigate to Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > The Interview > Preview Movie and double–click Interview—Dan Rodney.mp4.

3. Notice the following:

   • This video is a single person on camera documentary style interview.
   • Every so often the video cuts away from the “talking head” to show some footage of what the speaker is talking about.

4. Replay the video if you need to. We’ll be reproducing it in a series of exercises.

5. Close the video when done.

Getting Started

1. Switch back to Premiere Pro (relaunch it if needed).

2. In Premiere Pro, choose File > New > Project (or click the New Project button on the left side of the Home screen).

3. At the top left, for Project Name type in Your Name—The Interview

4. Click on the Project location menu and select Choose Location.

   • Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Premiere Pro Class and select The Interview folder.

   • Click Choose (Mac) or Select Folder (Windows).

5. On the right side of the window:

   • Turn off Copy media.
   • Turn off New bin.
   • Turn off Create new sequence.

   NOTE: These switches remember how you set them the last time you created a project.

6. Click Create (at the bottom right).

7. Lets make sure we’re all using the same interface.

   Choose Window > Workspaces > Editing.

8. Choose Window > Workspaces > Reset to Saved Layout.

   This resets the interface to the default editing workspace and ensures all your panels are returned to their default locations and sizes.

Importing Files

Before you can work with video, images or audio in Premiere Pro you have to import your media files. You can import individual files one at a time, groups of files in the same folder and even entire folders and their sub–folders.

1. Now it’s time to add files to your project. Choose File > Import.

   TIP: You can also use the keystroke Cmd–I (Mac) or CTRL–I (Windows) or open the Import dialog by double–clicking on any empty area of the Project panel.

2. Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > The Interview and:

   • Click once on the Media folder to highlight it (do NOT go into the folder).

   • Click Import (Mac) or Import Folder (Windows).

   NOTE: When you import a folder, Premiere Pro imports the folder, its content, and all sub–folders/contents and converts them into bins in Premiere. There is one exception, folders with only one item will not be converted to bins but the file will still be imported.

3. In the Project panel, click the list view button at the bottom left.

   NOTE: List view makes working with bins (Premiere’s name for folders) much easier.

4. In the Project panel, use the arrow to expand the Media bin.

5. Drag interview_audio.wav to the New Bin button on the bottom right of the Project panel.

   • Rename the new bin 02—Audio.

6. Click on the Video bin and press the Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) key to make the name editable.

   • Rename this bin 01—Video

7. Click on the Images bin and press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to make the name editable.

   • Rename this bin 03—Images

8. Use the arrow to expand the 01—Video bin.

9. CTRL–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on the Main Interview.mp4 clip and choose New Bin From Selection.

   • Rename this new bin A—Roll

10. Click the arrow to collapse the 01—Video and 02—Audio bins. Then:

    • Drag all three sub–bins (01—Video, 02—Audio, and 03—Images) out of the Media bin.
    • Click on the Media bin and press Delete (Mac) or Backspace (Windows).

11. At the top of the Project panel, click on the Name column header to sort by that column.

12. Drag the divider between the Name and Frame Rate headers to the right to make the Name column wider.

    This will make it easier to read long clip names.

13. Choose File > Save or Cmd–S (Mac) or CTRL–S (Windows) to save your project.

Creating a Sequence

A sequence in Premiere Pro is where you assemble your various assets together. It can contain any number of video, image, and audio files that you need to complete your editing tasks. A sequence has properties such as dimensions, frame rate, pixel aspect ratio, etc. Any footage added to a sequence has to be conformed to match the sequence settings. Usually we create a sequence from whichever clip represents the majority of our footage.

1. In the Project panel, use the arrow to expand the 01—Video > A-Roll bin.

2. From the A-Roll bin, drag Main Interview.mp4 into the empty Timeline panel to the right.

   This creates a new sequence based on the settings of that clip.

3. Hold Shift and press the + (plus) key to expand the height of all of the video and audio tracks in the Timeline.

   NOTE: Pressing Shift and + (plus) enlarges all the tracks while Shift and – (minus) reduces the heights of all the tracks on the timeline.

   You can also enlarge the video or audio tracks using the vertical scroll bars on the right of the Timeline.

   Individual track heights can be resized by dragging their border up or down in the track header section on the left of the Timeline.

4. Let’s pull our new sequence out of the folder.

   In the Project panel, drag the Main Interview sequence (NOT Main Interview.mp4) out of the A-Roll bin and into an empty area of Project panel.

5. CTRL–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on the Main Interview sequence and choose Rename.

6. Rename the sequence Interview—Dan Rodney.

7. Click into the Timeline panel, then hit Spacebar to start playing the video.

   Hit Spacebar again to stop the video.

8. Choose File > Save or hit Cmd–S (Mac) or CTRL–S (Windows).

   Keep the project open because you’ll use it in the next exercise.