Best Practices - how to organize sequences for audio mixing

Bill, you can mark Meg Dog's answer as 'correct' and it will let others in forum that you've got enough answers to move on at this point. You can always come back to a thread marked 'answered' to add something later ( like what finally worked best for you ). In essence Meg is a pro and is following something similar to what episodic TV post house would have to do. They get material from shooters every day for 8 days ( described by slates for video and sound ), then they have a short time to finalize the product ( sfx, grading, music soundtrack, etc.) Hence, the sequences and 'show sequence' ( which is the more or less final export and equivalent to YOU doing ONE sequence with everything stacked, cause you already HAVE all the material.)

What she has not mentioned, which is always fun I bet, is the 'reshoots, insert shots, wild track' etc.

One reason ( in my opinion) of keeping it simple with stacking things separately, is let's say you export and burn a BD and look at it a few times and decide, " Boy, that one spot really should be a fast cross dissolve instead of a straight cut."  You can go back to your project and adjust as needed (yet more stacking cause I hate the auto cross dissolve function with 'handles'). But at least you can DO it, without messing up the entire timeline.

I think everyone has their own pet preferences.

I'm using an old version of PPro (CS6), so a lot of what you have at your disposal in new version is not even an option in my version. I honestly wouldn't use those options myself anyway, as I prefer to edit things with a gazillion levels of video and audio tracks in ONE sequence. I very rarely nest anything into another sequence.

I am not a professional editor and don't have the expertise you need for advice.

Part of what you need to consider is the size of your monitors and your ability to create bins and rename files to

1) see in monitors all the levels of video and audio as needed

2) remember where stuff is located and what it's called.

I personally don't see any reason for submixes because that is what you are doing just by stacking your audio levels and adjusting the volume via keyframes, and adding effects, etc.  I mean, the outcome on export (and playback) is essentially a submix already.

I'm sure there are people around who have more expertise than me to give you some shortcuts and cool ways to do things using the new version of PPro.

OK, sorry, misunderstood you. Stems are submixes, usually stuff like "drums, guitar, vocals " etc. So that stem file is a baked in done deal ( with echo, reverb, mix, etc.). If you shot slated stuff with separate sound, that you have to sync in PPro, that is a different workflow ( due to fading in and out and J cuts and L cuts ) than if you shot with sound recorded in the video file ( like mp4 or something ).. So your workflow and how you organize stuff is going to depend on what you shot and what you got.

Good Luck !

Are you doing the work right in Premiere Pro, or going out to another audio program?

hmmm. You might try posting this question in the Audition forum regarding creating stems and maybe some there can also suggest something re: your layout in PPro for mixing audio once the stems are created, etc.  Mostly you'll probably be wanting to create wav files for your stems and other sound files, right ?