# A timeline of intentions

Period: Feb 2024 – Dec 2024 · Era: 2024 · The Great Convergence

Sora's storyboard, remix and the collage-in-a-card reference hack.

OpenAI's Sora let you lay out a film as cards on a timeline, each describing a moment, and filled in everything in between. It also let you remix, extend and blend clips. The films made with it were impressive, but they still took hundreds of attempts and a lot of traditional post-production.

## How it worked

1. Write hyper-descriptive prompts (film stock, lens, lighting) and accept a roughly 300:1 generated-to-used ratio.
2. At launch, lay caption cards on the Storyboard timeline, each optionally seeded with an image or clip, and let the model fill the gaps.
3. Use Remix to replace or remove elements, Re-cut to extend a good moment, Blend to merge two clips, Loop for seamless cycles.
4. Paste several reference images as one collage into a storyboard card, the community's stand-in for a reference system Sora never had.
5. Rotoscope out the strays in After Effects, unify with grain and grade, and upscale in Topaz.

## Why it mattered

Sora reframed the input as a timeline of intentions rather than a prompt, and its alpha films taught the industry that \"AI film\" still meant hundreds of takes plus conventional post.

## Why it faded

By launch day it was out-competed on consistency by Kling and on realism by Hailuo and Gen-3; OpenAI shut Sora down in April 2026.

## Tools of the era

- Sora (2024): https://openai.com/sora
- Topaz Video AI (2022): https://www.topazlabs.com

## Example videos and posts

- Sora has a secret super power: the storyboard · Theoretically Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZqxSGspcwA
- Create cinematic AI video in Sora: full tutorial · Curious Refuge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRGHOmD0lUk

## On the timeline

- [Sora Preview](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/sora-preview) (2024-02)
- [Air Head](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/air-head) (2024-02)
- [Sora Public Launch](https://aifilmhistory.org/entry/sora-public-launch) (2024-12)

## Sources

- Actually using Sora (fxguide, Air Head): https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/actually-using-sora/
- Sora first impressions: https://openai.com/index/sora-first-impressions/
- Washed Out and the Sora backlash: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/washed-out-a-i-video-backlash-hardest-part-interview-1235017826/
- Six features of the Sora app: https://www.maginative.com/article/six-top-features-of-sora-openais-new-ai-video-creation-platform/

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Source: https://aifilmhistory.org/workflows/sora-storyboard