Music & AudioBeginnerPreview
Sora & AI Video Basics
A grounded introduction to text-to-video AI built around OpenAI's Sora and its rivals Kling and Google Veo. You leave knowing what these tools genuinely do well, where they break, how to write prompts that hold up, and which marketing jobs they are ready for today.
For marketers, content creators, small-business owners, and social media managers who want to use text-to-video AI like Sora without an editing or technical background.
Course content
Workbook & downloads
Put the course into practice — a printable workbook plus editable templates you can fill in and reuse.
Preview the workbook
This workbook turns the course into reps. Each section matches a course module and gives you exercises to run inside Sora, Kling, or Veo, worksheets to capture your decisions, and checklists to keep your output honest and on-budget. Work through it with one of the tools open in another tab — the goal is a finished, compliant short-form marketing clip and a reusable prompt library you keep for every future project.
What Text-to-Video AI Actually Is
Get oriented to the category, run your first generation, and learn to judge any AI clip critically.
Exercise: Run and Compare Two First Generations
Pick whichever tool you can access (Sora via ChatGPT Plus, Veo via Gemini, or Kling's free tier). Generate the course starter prompt twice. Watch each clip three times before judging, then score both on the four axes from the course.
- Generate: A red hot-air balloon drifts slowly over a green valley at sunrise, gentle camera push-in, soft golden light, wisps of morning mist below
- Score each take on motion coherence, prompt adherence, temporal stability, and artifacts — which won and why in one sentence?
- How did the two non-identical results differ, and what does that tell you about budgeting takes?
Worksheet: AI Clip Critique Sheet
Use this for any generation, all course long, to train your eye. Fill it in while watching the clip a third time, not on first impression.
- Tool and model used
- Motion coherence (do limbs and objects move without melting?)
- Prompt adherence (did you get the subject and setting you asked for?)
- Temporal stability (does the final second hold up or warp?)
- Artifacts spotted (hands, faces, on-screen text, reflections)
- Keep or re-roll, and the one-sentence reason
Checklist: First-Loop Readiness
- Confirmed access to at least one tool (Sora, Kling, or Veo)
- Located the prompt box and the duration / aspect-ratio settings
- Completed one full text-to-video generation end to end
- Watched each clip three times before forming an opinion
- Saved both starter clips into a named folder as a baseline for later lessons
Capabilities, Limits, and Choosing a Tool
Get specific about each tool's ceilings and cost, then turn that into a decision rule you can apply to any brief.
Worksheet: Tool Capability and Cost Comparison
Fill one row per tool you are considering. Confirm current numbers on each tool's site, since specs and prices change often. This becomes your reference when scoping any project.
- Tool name (Sora, Kling, Veo, other)
- Max single-clip length (confirmed today)
- Max resolution available on your tier
- Generates audio? (Veo 3 yes; many others silent)
- Pricing model and your plan's monthly generation allowance
- Known strength in one phrase (audio, motion, prompt-following)
Exercise: Same Prompt, Three Tools
Run one identical test prompt through every tool you can access and compare like for like. This gives you an honest median, not a cherry-picked demo, to base a subscription decision on.
- Test prompt to reuse across tools: A golden retriever runs across a sunny beach toward the camera, sand kicking up, slow motion, warm afternoon light, shallow depth of field
- Which tool gave the best motion, and which followed the prompt most faithfully?
- Given the cost per clip, which tool is the best value for the work you actually do?
Worksheet: Monthly Generation Budget
Plan your spend before committing to a plan so you never stall mid-month with an empty allowance. Assume several generations per finished clip.
- Finished clips you need per month
- Expected generations per finished clip (assume 3 to 5)
- Total monthly generations needed
- Plan that covers that allowance, and its monthly cost
- Cheap exploration path (free tier, fast mode, or lower resolution)
- Hard monthly generation cap (stop and review when reached)
Checklist: Tool-Choice Discipline
- Confirmed current length, resolution, and audio limits before promising a deliverable
- Judged each tool by my own median output, not a viral highlight clip
- Matched the job to a default tool (audio to Veo, motion to Kling, complex prompts to Sora)
- Drafted cheaply and reserved premium generations for the take I already liked
- Set a hard monthly generation cap and noted it where I work
Prompting and Working Around the Failures
Adopt the four-part prompt formula and build a map of failure modes so your shots dodge the traps.
Exercise: Rewrite a Weak Prompt With the Formula
Take a deliberately vague prompt and rebuild it using all four slots: subject and scene, action, camera, and lighting and style. Generate both versions and compare side by side.
- Weak version to start from: barista making coffee
- Rewrite it filling all four slots explicitly with real camera terms, then paste your final concatenated prompt here
- What changed in the output between the vague and structured versions (camera, motion, mood)?
Worksheet: Four-Part Shot Prompt Builder
Use this template to construct any shot prompt. Fill each slot, then read the slots together as one flowing sentence to paste into the tool.
- Subject and scene (who or what, and where)
- Action (what the subject does)
- Camera (dolly in, pan, tracking, static, etc.)
- Lighting and style (light direction, color grade, lens, film look)
- Final concatenated prompt (the four slots read as one sentence)
Exercise: Provoke and Log a Failure
Deliberately push a model toward a known weakness, observe how it breaks, then design a shot that avoids it. This builds your personal failure map fast.
- Generate a tight close-up of hands doing something complex (shuffling cards, typing) — what broke?
- Generate a sign or product with your brand name on it — was the text legible or garbled?
- Reframe one of those shots to hide the weakness (wider angle, cutaway, text added in post) — did it work?
Checklist: Prompt and Failure-Avoidance Gate
- Every prompt fills all four slots — no empty action or camera
- Used a real camera term (dolly in, pan, tracking, static) instead of vague words
- Steered the concept toward a current strength (landscape, atmosphere, slow reveal, broad motion)
- Avoided tight hands, readable on-screen text, and precise physics, or added them in post
- Changed only one element between iterations and logged each change and outcome
From Clip to Campaign: Marketing Use Cases
Use image-to-video and Sora's control features, follow disclosure and rights rules, and ship a real marketing clip.
Exercise: Three Motions From One Brand Still
Upload a single product or brand image as the first frame and generate three different motions from it via image-to-video: a slow push-in, a gentle orbit, and a subtle parallax. You now have multi-angle coverage of one approved subject.
- What still did you use, and where did it come from (photo, render, generated image)?
- Write the motion prompt you paired with the image for the orbit shot
- Which of the three motions best fits your brand, and why is starting from a still safer than pure text?
Worksheet: AI Video Compliance Pass
Run this on every clip before it ships. If any answer is no or unsure, fix it before publishing — this protects the brand from takedowns and deception complaints.
- Is the clip labeled as AI where the platform requires it (Meta, TikTok, YouTube)?
- Did every real-person likeness or voice give explicit consent?
- Are all claims, testimonials, and results true and non-fabricated?
- Are the content credentials intact (Sora C2PA and watermark, Veo SynthID)?
- Do the tool's terms permit this commercial use?
Worksheet: Marketing Clip Production Plan
Plan the whole clip before generating. Lock the shared visual language up front so the finished piece reads as one author's work and fits the platform.
- Brief: goal, audience, and the metric this clip should move
- Tool chosen and the decision-rule reason (audio, motion, prompt complexity, budget)
- Locked palette, lighting style, and recurring subject for consistency
- Shot list of short beats, each within the tool's single-clip limit
- Hook shot for the first second (strongest or pattern-interrupt)
- Assembly plan: editor, 9:16 vertical, captions, music, and disclosure label
Checklist: Shipped-Clip Quality Gate
- Chose the tool deliberately from the decision rule, not from hype
- Used image-to-video for any shot where composition or brand mattered
- Drafted each shot cheaply, then rendered only keepers at full quality
- Led with a strong first-second hook and kept cuts to every 1 to 3 seconds
- Assembled vertically at 9:16 with captions, music, and the disclosure label
- Passed the full compliance pass before publishing
Your Action Plan
- Confirm access to at least one tool and run the starter prompt twice to internalize that identical prompts produce different takes
- Fill in the Tool Capability and Cost Comparison so you know each tool's real length, resolution, audio, and price
- Run one identical test prompt through every tool you can access and judge by your own median result
- Set a hard monthly generation cap and adopt draft-cheap, finalize-expensive as your default discipline
- Adopt the four-part prompt formula and keep a short cheat sheet of real camera terms beside you
- Build a personal failure map by provoking and logging where the models break, then design shots that dodge those traps
- Switch your default to image-to-video for any shot where composition or brand matters
- Make the four-question compliance pass — label, consent, true claims, intact credentials — a habit before any clip ships
- Plan one marketing clip end to end: brief, tool by rule, shot list within limits, locked visual language
- Assemble and finish one 15 to 30-second vertical clip with captions, music, a first-second hook, and a disclosure label
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