I edited a short film for a director a few months back and he hired me again yesterday because he wants me to teach him the basics of Premiere pro. This guy is quite a bit older (in his 70s at least), but I agreed to help him and came over to his house with all the materials from the short including the project files. After about an hour of explaining stuff to him, it dawned on me that we had a bigger problem. He doesnt really understand what a file is. He kept referring to our .prproj as a "folder" that contained the footage.

In this specific project, I nested my footage and audio to sync them, and then sorted those nested clips into bins by scene. He could not figure out why they existed in both the bins and in the footage folder on the hard drive, and why he couldnt find the bins in his finder window.

Sequences also presented a lot of confusion. I have a sequence with all my footage that I use to send dailys, and then one with my actual edit. I explained that the sequences only live inside Premiere, not in the folder on the drive, which only caused more confusion.

I want to help the guy, but I really am at a loss for how to explain this stuff to him. Anyone else had to do something like this?