Learning the Ropes of Premier Pro: Software That Puts the PRO in Project.
- ellennicoleshipman
- Nov 10
- 4 min read
By: Ellen Shipman
This Article is on the process of Filming, Editing, and Producing my PSA.
Here is the link to my Project! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGksfjTU0CI
Project Overview
60% of adolescents from 12-24 experience "test anxiety", 35% if which experience it to the point that it hinders their academic success. The kicker? 71% have never sought any kind of help. What resources can we use to prevent this from occurring, or stop this anxiety from spreading to the other important areas of our lives? My PSA hopes to answer that question by promoting the Trone Center for Mental Fitness, a underutilized campus resource that provides students with psychiatric help. It is my hope that this video not only brings attention to this incredible Furman resource, but also sheds light on how debilitating test anxiety can be.
Designing the Project
Coming out of this project, I'd just like to say what a huge challenge it was and how proud I am of how much I learned about Adobe Premier Pro!
Before I even began this project, I set my project goals in place to be as efficient as possible.
I knew going that in I needed:
a flexible filming schedule
Practice filming a variety of shots with different editing techniques
Some kind of storytelling element outside of an interview bc I already had a lot of practice filming interviews from my mini doc and our labs and I wanted experience with something different
Therefore:
I built my story around one main character so that I only had to align my schedule with one other person. While this other person ended up being me, It was still nice not to have to match up the actions of multiple people throughout shot sequences.
My script had no words, only nat sound building to create suspense and illustrate the feelings of anxiety common in test anxiety situations.
Meticulously plan out the shot I needed to film to tell this story checklist style so that the story was fluid with no holes yet choppy
Brainstorm nat sounds in a classroom that bothered me while I was takin a test- feet tapping, fingers drumming, pens clicking, heavy breathing, clock ticking, scratch of writing, etc.
From there I wrote my script as a long series of shots with the nat sound timed out to build suspense. Then I cut half of it so that no shots would be redundant and each shot had a purpose that moved the story along so as not to lose my audience. I crafted a checklist of shots in the order that they could appear in the PSA, then copied it and reordered it in the order I would film them in to prevent discrepancies or jump cuts.
Finally I watched this video for advice on how to shoot cinematic frames alone, and it helped turn my SUPER boring location (a classroom in Furman hall) into a suspenseful atmosphere.
Filming
I filmed it all in one night so my hair and makeup would be the same, filmed a variety of shots per shot on the checklist to give me plenty of editing space, and kept anal track of where my hands, feet, head, and posture were in each shot since to prevent discrepancies. After double checking that I had ample footage for each shot I began editing.
I built the video from the ground up, having to use elements of every piece of my footage, despite having way too much. One shot would be perfect acting, alignment, and exposure wise, but I would be turning the wrong way, or my pen would have switched hands, so I couldn’t use it, or had rearrange my footage to include the good parts and cover the bad. I learned from this the importance of both quality and quantity of shots, paying attention to detail, and saving space of the editing phase. In addition, I consistently got frustrated with how long using Premier Pro was taking me, despite it being my first time editing a major project using this software. I noticed that this process went much faster after I got over the initial learning curve where hours would pass and I would have made 15 seconds of progress.
Growth
This process caused SO MUCH GROWTH for me.
I shot my first project n an iPhone instead of a Canon R500 Vixia!
I discovered cinematic mode on an iPhone, and how to structure a shot to create a cinematic structure.
I learned basic editing techniques on adobe premiere pro including sound modulation, audio layering, color grading, bass modification, flipping and sizing shots, adding transitional screens!
I learned about animating videos on canvas, its benefits (free elements, audio, and good font selection) as well as its shortcomings (precise cuttings, audio templates licensed to canva, ect.)
How to prevent microphone feedback when recording!
How to edit audio in Adobe Audition and upload it to Premier Pro.
How to upload something to Youtube!
And SO much more.
Time to do it again!
If I ever have to film a solo project again, theres several things I would change. I would wear a shirt that sat consistently on my shoulders since its movement deemed a lot of my foot unusable. I would get some of my friends to be in the first shot to set the scene and increase the feeling of isolation at the beginning. I would delete the ticking portion of my audio track in Canva after using it to timeout my shots because I had to use 2 slightly different pitched ticking tracks in Premier Pro vs Canva. I would use AI to create a custom track of ticking that slowly gets faster to sync my clips to, because doing it manually creates a huge hassle and added hours of work.
Despite the difficulties, I am confident that working on projects in the future will go more smoothly since I have had to learn to navigate every aspect of this throughout this project.
Published: November 10th, 2025
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