How to add a background color in Premiere Pro

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Course contents
SECTION: 4
Preferences 10:03
SECTION: 10
Freeze, Hold & Pause 7:20
SECTION: 14
Storyboarding / Planning 3:04
SECTION: 21
Workspaces 2:38

Questions

1

Course info

146 lessons / 17 hours 49 quiz questions 14 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hi there, my name is Daniel Walter Scott & I’m an award winning Adobe Certified Instructor. Welcome to the Premiere Pro Advanced Course.

This course is aimed at people who already know the fundamentals of Adobe Premiere Pro. If you have developed your own way of doing things but you realise there are so many tools, updates & time saving techniques that you haven't had time to explore then this course is definitely for you.
• We look at the best productivity hacks & little known features to super speed your timeline editing. 
• We explore color management, color grading, color replacement & skin tone correction.
• You will master all the new Lumetri color methods and harness the power of scopes. 
• You will learn new ways to successfully create traditional & new style transitions. 
• You will quickly become a master at fixing shaky handheld and drone footage.
• There won’t be anything you can’t mask or blur.
• We will get your computer running at warp speed using Proxies, Scratch Disk & Cache management. 
• You’ll master high frame rate footage to enable you to produce spectacular slow motion video. 
• You will create high quality professional motion graphics & data driven infographics. 
• You’ll learn all about Premiere Pro’s responsive time and design tools so you can make graphics & animation once that can be used across multiple future productions. 
• You will learn file and footage techniques which will enable you to work with multiple editors. 
• Multi-camera editing will be a breeze. 
• You will learn stunning techniques to help clean up your audio by removing noise, hiss & echo. 
• Learn how to manipulate & extend your music in Premiere Pro & also in Adobe Audition. 
• You’ll learn which tools & techniques are best for removing the monotony of repurposing the same footage across multiple sizes for social media. 
• Learn about markers, subtitles and amazing plugins, 
• You will learn all the best tricks and settings which will enable you to get the most from your rendering in Premiere Pro and also in Adobe Media Encoder.   
We cover all these topics and more in this course. 
Take a look at the contents and read reviews from other students and you’ll see this is the course that will get you from adequate - to EXCELLENT in Premiere Pro.

In this course we use real world, practical projects and use exercise files which you can download and then work alongside me.

If you can’t remember the last time you sat down & went through the features & updates in Premiere Pro, let this course be your all-in-one professional development & upgrade.  

You owe it to yourself -  sign up and get ready to become a Premiere Pro Super Hero.
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

How to earn your certificate

Work your way towards your certificate for this course by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz (Merit level courses only)
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project (Distinction level courses only) - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Request your certificate when you've completed the requirements for the certificate level you're working towards

Good luck!

Pass certificates

We’re awarding ‘Pass’ level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your ‘Pass’ certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Don’t forget to request your certificate when all your projects are complete

Good luck!

Merit certificates

We’re awarding ‘Merit’ level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your ‘Merit’ certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Don’t forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Distinction certificates

We're awarding 'Distinction' level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your 'Distinction' certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Don't forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Oh, exciting, we're going to put a big block of color on the screen, oh, it gets a little more exciting, look, we mask this out, so we can use background color with a mask on top, let me show you how. 

To add a background color there's a couple of ways, I'll show you two of the ways, there's quite a few, actually, I want actually, this thing here is in the wrong spot. So who remembers how I shift these around, what key do I hold down? I want to put you in front of this one. You hold down the 'Command' key, so start dragging first, hold the 'Command' key down on a Mac, 'Ctrl' key on a PC, we should be able to switch them around, and this one here at the end, however you get there, get this one at the end.

What I want to do is put a background color behind it. We're going to mask it out, like you saw at the beginning, but first of all let's make the background color. So there's two ways, the old school way and the new school way. There's no real better version, let's click on 'New Item' down here in my Project panel, let's go to a 'Color Matte'. So we kind of know what a matte is, right? So our Color Matte is going to be, this one here is going to match the same height and width, and size of my project, which is great, or the right Aspect Ratio, and it ends up, well actually, let's do a color first. 

I don't mind the color as long as it's kind of a tealy green, it's going to go with what we've got here. Give it a name, Background or Color Matte. You'll notice it appears in my project. So it's something physical in here that I can drag on, and it's a full colored background, there's nothing wrong with that, there is more control when you do it with the Essential Graphics panel. So make sure you open that, go to 'Window', 'Essential Graphics', let's go to 'Edit', and let's create a new rectangle. 

It's kind of the new school way, there's a lot more control for animation, depends what you need. So let's click on 'New Rectangle', it's the wrong size, so I'm going to drag it up there and drag it down here, and you can see here, I've got more control, I can play around with its position and scale, and its opacity, its fill, its stroke, its shadow, there's potentially more control here, and you'll notice though that it doesn't appear, in your Project window, so you don't drag it out, you can copy and paste it as many times as you like, and change it, but yeah, they're just going to operate differently. 

This one here, I want to pick that same kind of green color, I want to put it underneath this, but I need to mask this out. So I'm going to do a quick mask, we did masks earlier in the course, so a little bit of practice. If you found them really hard, you can use the Pen tool, and just go clickety click, click, click, click, just do a real basic one. 

What you're going to do is, kind of click over here, over this, it's sometimes hard to get over these edges, it's better to kind of click inside and back to the beginning, and then drag these out afterwards. So that might be all you got, you might hate the Pen tool, we can invert it, I'm going to do a good one. So I'm going to start again, and probably just do it in speed mode. Go back to the masking part of the course, if you want a bit of a refresher. 

All right, so I got my mask, is it great? No? I should spend some more time, but let's invert it, I'm going to turn, further down a little bit, like 2, it's quite blurry at the edges, and let's play with the layer order. So let's move this upper track, put this underneath, and it doesn't matter whether you're using your-- actually, if you're following along, do it the Essential Graphics way, with the rectangle tool. Yeah, it's going to work for us. 

So adding a background is easy, drawing a mask with the Pen tool is problematic, but hey, we're here, let's get on to the next video, where we look at gradients.

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