# Setting up your Premiere project

## Just starting things off
you'll hear us say this again and again, but Premiere Pro has been built with the intent that every aspect of your editing is 100% in your control. unfortunately, this does mean that there's a small time investment to get your project started -- but once you have this down, everything starts to fall in place!

to start things off, I recommend deciding where you'll be storing all your media assets. You have the option to put it wherever, but for now **I recommend creating a dedicated folder on your desktop** and we'll be putting everything there.

This folder is going to contain:
* your footage
* your project file
* your auto-save files
* any cached render data

in the short-term, this will keep things nicely organized through the course of your project. In the long term, this can help keep your computer from inflating with all the cached files.

**once you have this folder created, start up Premiere and select New Project**

this is going to open up this interface, giving you the option to select that folder you already created.

**give it a name, select Browse, and choose your folder**


## setting up your workspace

in many ways, editing is a method of organizing moments in time into story, Premiere really takes this to heart. it gives you unlimited ways to customize your workspace, manage your workflow, and organize your footage.

the way we approach just about any technique in this tutorial is one of many. it's simply a good starting point, rather than the perfect option for you! so feel free to play around and find what makes sense.

**To start off, select the Editing workspace from your choices at the top**


this is going to rearrange the panes in your project -- you can absolutely do this manually. each pane can be expanded or shrunk, by just grabbing the edges of it. the workspace options at the top are simply an easy way to move them around.

next up, navigate down to the Project browser -- this is going to be where your footage is "held".


**open up a Finder window, navigate to that footage folder, and drag all your footage from your Finder window into your Project pane**

now that you have footage in your project, you're just about good to go. the last thing you need is a timeline to start filling in.

**navigate to the top of the screen, File => New => Sequence**

if you simply hit *OK*, you'll have a 1080p sequence in 24fps. which should be fine for what you're making today. some footage may need to be scaled up to fit.

otherwise, you're good to start editing!