Premiere to AE. Where to begin!?

Hi all.

I finally finished my project in premiere pro 3, and am ready to import into AE and begin my VFX. (The only things i havent done are credits and volume adjustments. Credits because AE can do far better ones than premiere, and volumes as my timeline will change.)
I have imported the project file, and now have 2 folders in the project pane (one saying "movie name" project, the other "solids"). This is ideal, as i was told this will keep all my fades, and allow me to apply masks and not have to worry about the fades interupting them. The only problem is, i dont know where to go from here. I have all these files sitting in my project window and I have to deinterlace, apply a rotoscoping effect, a leave colour effect and a few of the "look suites" from magic bullet, but i really dont know how to go about starting this. I had visions of a nice neat timeline that allowed me to drag and drop effects onto the shots i need, but the footage that i have is the 8 13gb imports of original footage.
I know this is a pain of a request, but any tutorials about how to work on projects imported from pp3 would be fine. I have lots to learn, and not long to do it in.
cheers!
dave

p.s is it worth leaving the audio volumes until after ive done my AE work and imported back into premiere? Just in case i add more footage on.