Adobe Premiere Pro's New 'Productions' Tool Explained

Adobe Premiere Pro announced a new I-didn't-think-I-needed-this-but-I'm-glad-it's-here feature dubbed Productions. Before we dive into exactly what it is. It's not available yet. Let me repeat that for our skim-readers: this a "coming soon" situation. It's like the pre-roll footage before the actual trailer. 

When released, Productions is going to improve workflow. You can look at it as a robust content management directory that lets you easily access assets from different projects and the option to locally share the assets with multiple users.

How does it work

If you’re familiar with bin/folder management in Premiere Pro it should be a breeze to pick up. After choosing a Productions location (File>New>Production) it creates a directory folder. The projects you then save to it become part of the Production and all the assets can be accessed and shared between projects. Any changes to the assets done in Premiere Pro or directly on the local storage will automatically sync and update. What’s great about the concept is it eliminates the need to duplicate assets for individual projects. It also allows you quickly access and reuse any sequence in the folder structure.

Sharing

Productions allow multiple editors to work on different projects at once. To avoid unwanted changes to sequences Adobe added a project locking feature that can be unlocked when ready. Locked files can still be copied from project to project or sequence to sequence. It’s important to note sharing in Productions can only be done locally. You’ll need storage that’s shared by multiple workstations to cash in on the feature. Sorry cloud hopefuls.

You might be thinking doesn’t Premiere Pro already have sharing capabilities. Yes. Shared Projects which is for locally based workflows and Team Projects which is Creative Cloud based and ideal for those working in different locations. Productions is a separate concept but works similar to Shared Projects. Productions share the same settings, scratch disks and GPU. Once a sequence is created and rendered by an editor it’s available to everyone else.

Who is it for

Any Premiere Pro user really. Organization is its strength. Let’s say you’re working on a television or web series. With Productions you’ll be able to save each project episode inside the directory to access anytime. So if you want to reference material from a previous episode it’s available in the current project you’re working on. Cool. If editing a feature, doc or short you can divide scenes up to ant to work on one scene and let someone else take a crack at another they can.

Pricing & Availability

Pricing and availability are unknown. However, it has seen beta testing on Dolemite is My Name. Shout out to editor Billy Fox. Also, editor Kirk Baxter is using it on David Fincher's up-coming biopic Mank, which, according to Deadline, was going to follow his 1997 film The Game. For its release we're guessing, Adobe will update it after feedback from the latter and then launch it to the public. We’ll keep you in the loop. In the meantime, do you have a favorite biopic? Let us know in the comments below.

Update: Adobe says Productions will be part of Premiere Pro and will not require an additional cost. Single app subscription, CCT, CCE will all include Productions at the time of release.