How to prompt Sora AI

Documentary-style handheld footage. A skateboarder in a faded green jacket carves through an empty city plaza at sunset, narrating his ride as golden light cuts between the buildings. He pushes twice, glides past a fountain, ollies a two-stair, lands clean and rolls toward camera grinning. He says over the ride: "Everyone asks why I skate alone. This is why — the whole city goes quiet." Lighting: low golden hour sun with long shadows. Palette anchors: amber, concrete grey, deep teal sky.

Twenty seconds is where Sora separates from every other model — one continuous, physically coherent ride with narration. The counted actions ("pushes twice", "ollies a two-stair") anchor the timeline so the clip does not wander.

Cinematic product commercial, 50mm at f/2.8. A frosted glass bottle of cold brew stands on a walnut counter in a sunlit kitchen, condensation beading on the glass.

Cinematography:
- Camera: medium close-up, eye level, slow push-in
- Mood: calm, premium, morning-fresh

Actions:
- A hand lifts the bottle from the counter, tilts it 30 degrees toward camera
- Light catches the condensation droplets rolling down the cold glass
- The hand sets it down with a soft thud in the final second

Lighting: soft window light from the right, warm lamp fill. Palette anchors: cream, walnut brown, deep coffee black.

The full block format from the Sora cookbook — prose first, then labeled sections. "Tilts it 30 degrees" and "in the final second" are the kind of measurable beats Sora executes on time.

16mm film look, handheld tracking. A cyclist in a wet nylon jacket rides through light rain across an old iron bridge, an 8-10 mph crosswind from camera left pressing the fabric against her arm. She pedals three times, stops pedaling, and coasts as the bridge cables sweep past. Footfalls of a jogger splash in shallow puddles in the background. Lighting: overcast softbox sky, cool and even. Palette anchors: slate blue, wet iron grey, muted red jacket.

Coding materials and forces explicitly — "wet nylon", "8-10 mph crosswind", "splashing in shallow puddles" — is the Sora technique that kills floaty, weightless motion. Name the physics you expect and the simulation delivers it.

Handcrafted paper-craft animation style, everything visibly made of folded and layered paper. A tiny paper fishing boat rocks on a sea of overlapping blue paper waves, a paper whale surfaces in three folding movements, water "splashes" as white paper confetti. The boat's lantern glows warm through the paper. Camera: wide shot, slow crane down toward the waterline. Mood: gentle, storybook. Palette anchors: indigo, cream, lantern amber.

Sora's creative range is the reason to pick it for non-photoreal work — committed style worlds hold consistently for the whole clip. Describe the material logic of the world ("splashes as paper confetti") and it stays coherent.

Cinematic drama, 85mm portrait compression. Over-the-shoulder two-shot in a late-night diner booth, neon from the window edging both faces.

Actions:
- The man in a corduroy jacket slides a folded map across the table
- The woman opens it, scans it for two seconds, looks up

Dialogue:
- Man: "It is a six-hour drive."
- Woman: "Then we leave tonight."

Lighting: warm practical lamps with cool neon rim. Palette anchors: amber, teal, diner-red vinyl.

Keep each line under a breath and attribute it — Sora lip-syncs quoted dialogue to the described speaker. The map is a prop beat that gives the actors business between lines, which reads far more natural than two people trading lines statically.

Documentary-style handheld, slight breathing movement, natural imperfect framing. A potter in a cluttered sunlit studio centers a mound of wet clay on the wheel, hands glistening. The wheel spins; the clay rises into a cylinder over four seconds; she narrows it at the neck with two fingers. Ambient: wheel motor hum, wet clay slip, a radio murmuring in the next room. Lighting: hard window light from the left, dust in the beam. Palette anchors: terracotta, bone white, denim blue.

"Documentary-style handheld" plus natural ambient sound is a reliable realism recipe on Sora. The clay rising "over four seconds" paces the transformation so it neither snaps nor drags.

Handheld phone footage, vertical framing, energetic. Extreme close-up, shallow depth of field, 85mm: a barista snaps a shaker shut and shakes it twice hard, ice rattling. Whip to a medium shot as she pours a layered iced matcha in one continuous ribbon into a tall glass. She looks at the lens and says: "Stop paying seven dollars for this." Lighting: bright cafe daylight. Palette anchors: matcha green, cream, warm oak.

Front-load the loudest beat — the shaker snap — in the first second; the pour is the payoff. One camera change ("whip to a medium") is the maximum a short vertical clip should carry.

Animate this frame with documentary restraint: the mist drifts slowly across the valley, the hiker's jacket flutters at the hem, a hawk crosses the sky far in the background left to right. Camera holds nearly static with a barely perceptible push-in. Ambient: wind over the ridge, fabric flutter, one distant hawk cry.

In image-to-video the still fixes composition and light; the prompt directs only motion and sound. Keep the camera nearly static and the motion secondary ("flutters at the hem") to preserve the source frame's fidelity. Note: input images with real human faces are rejected by the safety system — use generated or faceless stills.

Shot on 16mm, visible grain, slight gate weave, 1970s road-movie feel. A dusty coupe rolls down a desert two-lane at dusk, telephoto from a low angle beside the road so heat shimmer bends the horizon. The car passes camera; the shot holds on the taillights shrinking toward the mountains. Ambient: engine fading, cicadas rising, wind. Lighting: last direct sun, hard and orange. Palette anchors: burnt orange, dust tan, fading violet sky.

Sora commits to period film emulation when the spine names the stock, the artifacts and the era together. The hold-on-taillights ending is a single sustained composition — Sora keeps it stable where shorter-clip models drift.

Same shot as previous generation, one change: switch to an 85mm lens and tighten to a medium close-up. Keep the action, timing, lighting and palette anchors identical. — Base prompt: Cinematic kitchen scene, a chef plates a seared duck breast in three precise movements, wide shot at eye level, soft overhead key light. Palette anchors: copper, slate, herb green.

The iteration discipline that makes Sora productive: change exactly one variable and name the change. Run these iterations on Sora 2 at 720p, and only send the locked prompt to Sora 2 Pro at 1080p for the final render.