What to do first: effects or montage? I have to make a five-minute video for a school project. The video includes a few interviews where I want to have their name and job description slide in, and blur the background to prevent distractions. I was planning to do these edits in AE and make a montage of the interviews in Premiere Pro. So in what order do you recommend to do these activities? Both options have their pros and cons:


If I montage it first, AE has to render the whole video again, and I suppose that's not necessary for the parts where I'm not going to use masks and stuff.
If I edit it first, I'm probably going to apply masks at fragments that I'm not going to use, that's also quite time-consuming.


So which method do you recommend?
Probably the best way would be to first edit your video completely in Premiere Pro and then use the dynamic-link feature. If you do it the other way round, you won't know exactly what footage will be used and on which clips to apply the effects. If you've already edited your clips and put them into a timeline you know how your final film will look and you're able to integrate the effects much better into your film.

For the dynamic-link workflow, create a new timeline in Premiere Pro and do all of your editing (what you called montaging).
After you've done with your final edit, you can bring the clips into After Effects to do the effects. Right-click on the clip you want to edit and select "replace with After Effects composition". Then this single clip will be automatically opened in After Effects and you can apply your effects. The clip in your Premiere timeline will be automatically replaced with the AE composition and you still are able to change your edit later and change stuff in your timeline. Then after you've done all the effects you need render the Premiere Pro timeline and you have your finished film.