You certainly picked the right person to ask.
This summer I graduated from a three-year education focusing primarly on videoediting and mostly digital videoediting
Adobe Premiere is not the best choice out there if you want to make professional productions, I agree wholeheartedly, but it's on the cheaper end of things if you compare to better suites such as Avid XPress or Media 100i.
If you want a low-cost but effective editing application I suggest checking out Pinnacle Studio. From what I know it's even cheaper than Adobe Premiere (unless you buy a whole package deal) and people I know have had good experiences from it.
Otherwise there are applications such as Vegas Video, but I do not have a price or anyone to ask about experiences.
My suggestion is checking out
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf and specifically "NLE editing on the PC", there they have many discussions going on which editing application to go with.
They can also help you with the editing side of things, asking how to achieve certain effecs in your application and such.
But, this is veering from OFP to NLE (Non Linear Editing) so I suggest you direct further questions on the non-OFP side of things to me in a private message instead of the thread. And we can use the thread to discuss the OFP side of things, mainly how to achieve certain camera effects etc.