An Updated Sora AI Video Prompt Guide for Creators

One of the challenges with generating videos in Sora is finding the right balance between the prompts you write and the technical news, such as model updates and the new features, and getting real value from them.

That said, you'll need a Sora AI video prompting guide to explore the practical side and consolidate the key lessons to make them easier to digest.

Part 1. Sora AI Video Prompt Guide to Create

When it comes to prompting and getting the intended video in Sora, you need to know a few things:

1. Know When to Be Open or Descriptive in Prompts

So how do you get the most out of this new platform? What prompting approaches actually drive results?

A big concept OpenAI highlights is knowing when to be open and when to be descriptive. Your natural instinct is often to give the model extremely specific details to match exactly what you see in your mind. Learning how to do that is a big part of effective prompting.

At the same time, there are situations where letting the model be more creative works better. If you're not fully sure what you want other than a few key ideas, you need to give Sora some room to interpret and be valuable. As OpenAI puts it, shorter prompts give the model more creative freedom and often lead to more surprising results.

Short prompts can be very minimal or slightly descriptive. For example, something like a fun 1990s educational video explaining reinforcement learning in two sentences. OpenAI's own example of a short prompt is:

"In an '80s documentary-style interview, an old Polish man sits in a study and says, 'I still remember when I was young.'"

This works well because the style is defined, the subject and setting are clear, but many details are intentionally left out. Things like time of day, lighting, outfits, camera angles, and tone are not specified, which allows the model to make creative choices. Sometimes, leaving those decisions to the model produces better results than tightly controlling every element.

2. Think in Units and Shots

When you want a bit more structure, you should think of each shot as its own unit. You can add many shots in a single prompt, especially when there's a sequence of actions, but each shot should be treated as a self-contained unit.

And what does that mean? What's in a unit?

A strong unit usually includes the following elements:

• Style reference: For example, a documentary, educational, or fictional video. This is one of the most important elements because so much of video depends on mood and vibe.
• Camera setup: This could describe the camera type or how it's framed relative to the subject.
• One subject action: Each unit should focus on a single main action to avoid overwhelming the Sora AI video model.
• One camera move: Many shots won't have camera movement, but if they do, you should keep it to one clear move.
• Lighting recipe: A single lighting approach, such as natural light or a specific light source.
• Dialogue or sound: Videos don't need dialogue, but you can include sound or music cues if relevant.

3. Use Ultra-Detailed Prompts for Complex Projects

If you have a very specific vision, such as a short film or detailed marketing content, Sora can handle highly detailed prompts as well.

For complex cinematic shots, you can specify professional production details, similar to how a director briefs a camera crew or VFX team. This includes things like camera setup, lighting, grading, sound design, and even the reasoning behind certain shots.

For example, your prompt can have multiple structured sections before the action even begins. These cover format and look, lens and filtration, grading and color palette, lighting and atmosphere, location and framing, foreground and background details, negative prompts, wardrobe, props, extras, and sound.

Only after all of that does the prompt move into the shot list; even then, each shot includes specific timing, despite the final video being only a few seconds long. This level of detail, especially timestamps, is something people are increasingly using and sharing on social platforms because it helps the model stick closely to the intended result.

4. Use AI to Help You Write Better Prompts

Now, if you're using Sora, that means you have access to ChatGPT, which is pretty useful when it comes to writing prompts. This is useful when you work at this level of detail but don't know much about technical filmmaking concepts.

You just need to describe your idea, and ChatGPT can come up with a complete prompt.

You can also take Sora's sample prompt from one of its featured videos, ask ChatGPT to turn it into a reusable template, and then describe your idea in plain language. The model can fill in details like lighting or camera choices based on the atmosphere you're aiming for. This turns AI into a helper for the prompting process itself.

While ChatGPT is a useful tool, you'll still need to edit the prompts it gives you to get the best results.

5. Combine Unexpected Elements

One of Sora's strengths is that it's really creative and imaginative. You can combine unique elements together in an unexpected way to get really amazing results. One example is creating hybrid animals, and it needs minimal prompting.

You could ask ChatGPT to create a prompt for: "A hybrid animal that combines a horse and a leopard in a cinematic movie".

Then, paste that into Sora, and you'll see Sora mimics the galloping motion of a horse but maps the leopard's patterns onto the skin.

Sora is pretty good at generating animals in general, whether that's hybrids or anthropomorphic creatures with animal faces but human bodies and actions.

6. Be Simple In Showing People, Clothing, and Environments

One thing Sora does really, really well, though, is people. People, especially when it comes to details in the faces or unique clothing with different textures and patterns, and also putting people inside some crazy, imaginative environments.

The prompt adherence is amazing here. Sora easily understands the ethnicity, hair, clothing, and atmosphere in your prompts, so there is not a lot of work you need to do here. A simple idea is enough in your prompt, and Sora follows correctly.

However, just like in other video generators, it does make a lot of mistakes when it comes to anatomy. A few extra arms or legs here and there happen a lot, so you should avoid generating videos where there's a lot of dynamic movement and motion in them.

Part 2. Bonus: Learn and Use Videography Terms & Techniques In your Sora AI Video Prompts

If you're new to Sora, you might know what you want but not how to describe it, especially if you don't come from an art or cinema background. So, to achieve the desired effect, you have to learn some basic cinematic terms.

Camera Position and Framing

Camera position and framing are very important terms that you can leverage in your prompts, especially when it comes to Sora AI video generation.

Here are the best ones:

• Close-up highlights detail and emotion.
• Over-the-shoulder adds context and depth.
• High-angle shots make the subjects look smaller and more vulnerable.
• Low-angle shots make them look more imposing or powerful.
• A bird's-eye view is usually straight down. If you actually want a bird's-eye view, tell Sora you want an overhead shot instead.
• Dutch angle tilts the camera to feel the tension in the air.
• Medium shot frames the main subjects from the waist up.
• Wide shots capture a large area, so you can provide context and setting.
• Full-body shots or long shots work well to add context and scale to the scene.

Camera Movement Techniques

Next, let's go through some terms that describe how the camera should move in your Sora AI video prompts.

A pan is a camera rotation left or right.

And a camera tilt is also a rotation up or down.

You may already know zoom in and zoom out.

Tracking shots allows you to follow a subject as it moves through the scene. You can make these shots more dynamic by changing them to tracking shots so the camera moves left and right.

You can also use the camera in a circular motion. You can use handheld or shaky terms with it to induce a sense of fear and panic. Contrast that with a cinematic view, which you'd see in nature documentaries or opening sequences.

And finally, a fun one is the tilt-shift, which makes big objects look really small.

Film Style and Visual Era

Up next is film style in your prompts. This really impacts the vibe of the clip. What you can do here is to describe a prompt to create a video of something shot on a modern cell phone compared to something shot on a cell phone in the mid-2000s. It's a good way to date your clips, too, like a rich, colored clip shot in the 1950s.

And finally, no film style would be complete without the GoPro. Adding that to your prompts creates that feeling for you to show anything you want in that specific style of capturing.

GoPros are great for action shots and can be a bit disorienting, while camcorders can make for good horror films.

Revisit different time periods with keywords like a video from the 1910s, or just prompt for vintage film, which gives historical old-school color grading like you're watching something from an archive.

Color Grading and Mood

Next up is color grading. It can also make a big difference in terms of the emotions you convey in a video, and Sora is pretty good at following these.

For example, a snowy scene with cool tones feels more serious, versus a similar scene with warm tones, which feels a bit more comforting.

You can add some humor to a serious situation by using pastel tones. With monochrome palettes, you can remove distractions that are normally caused by color.

For example, the green in the Matrix style is so famous that 95% of you are going to feel something related to the movie.

Black and white is the classic monochrome and evokes a sense of the past. This bleach bypass effect sucks out the color to make it feel gritty or dark, versus super saturation, where you get these really rich colors.

Lighting Techniques and Atmosphere

Now, the lighting.

First up is high-key lighting. It makes the presenter uplifting and approachable.

You can contrast this with low-key lighting, which looks more dramatic and moody.

You can also use chiaroscuro to create harsh contrast between shadow and light, and then switch entirely to fire pits to create a warm, intimate setting.

Not only that, adjust your prompt to have the same scene with diffuse light to make it appear softer and gentler. Shadows in this setting evoke intimacy and also a little mystery.

Moonlight, on the other hand, creates calm or even subtle unease.

Backlighting is fun to make characters appear to glow, especially in cold environments.

Lens flares, especially in space, give off a dreamy or sci-fi feel.

Using Shadows and Natural Light

Moving on to shadows, you can use clouds for a sense of impending doom.

You can also use shadows and facial expressions to create tension in the scene.

Don't forget about spotlights and different colors of spotlights for the right mood.

When you learn to use these words in every sentence of your prompt, Sora understands it a lot better. With the new Sora 2 release, you can generate synchronized audio alongside video, which adds another layer of engagement.

Part 3. FAQs of Sora AI Video Prompt Guide

Conclusion on Sora AI Video Prompt Guide

What this Sora AI video prompt guide covers is that you have a wide range of options. You can go from very loose prompts that encourage creativity to extremely detailed prompts that tightly control the outcome.

For many use cases, a middle ground works best. Following a unit structure with a style reference, camera setup, subject action, camera movement, lighting approach, and sound or dialogue often gives strong adherence while still allowing some creative flexibility.

Two key ideas run throughout the prompting guide. First, style matters a lot. You can choose the right vibe upfront that can carry a large part of the result. Second, if you do have a clear vision, there's no such thing as too much specificity. Be explicit, describe what you want, and see how the model responds.