How I Made a Chair Disappear in My Video Using Premiere Pro

One sunny afternoon, I set out to shoot a simple storytelling video. I had just one problem — there was an old plastic chair in the background that I didn’t want in the frame. The location was too perfect to change, and I didn’t want to move the chair either, as it might ruin the natural setup.

So, an idea struck me. “What if I just made it disappear in post?” It sounded ambitious, but I was up for the challenge.

The Shooting Plan

I knew I had to make editing easier later, so I did two shots:

First Shot (Clean Plate): I recorded about 5 seconds of the exact frame without me or the chair in it. Just the plain background.
Second Shot (Main Footage): I then recorded the real scene with me in it and the chair still in place.

Making sure the camera didn’t move was key. I used a tripod and avoided touching it between both shots. This setup gave me the raw material I needed to work the magic later in Premiere Pro.

Editing: Making the Chair Disappear

Back in Premiere Pro, here’s what I did:

I imported both clips — the clean plate and the main video.
I stacked the clean plate on top of the main clip in the timeline.

I used the opacity mask tool on the clean plate to cut around the area where the chair was visible in the main shot.
Voila! The chair was gone. The clean plate masked that area perfectly, and it looked like the chair was never there.

I feathered the mask edges slightly to blend it in better. No glitches. No jumps. Just clean magic.

Lessons Learned

Planning during the shoot saves a lot of editing stress later.
Premiere Pro is more powerful than people think — especially when you learn to use masking creatively.
This technique works for other things too — power lines, bins, even people in the background.

So, the next time something in your shot ruins your vision, don’t panic — just plan for a clean plate and mask it out in post. Trust me, it works.