“The brand film was almost entirely created with Sora, with some corrective VFX and an original music score composed by Aaron Marsh of famed indie rock band Copeland,” wrote Toys “R” Us in a press release.
In March, OpenAI showed off a selection of short videos created using Sora. Without context, many of the professionally produced clips—such as Air Head by shy kids—gave the impression that Sora handled all of the work and that it could produce remarkably consistent video natively. But in April, Mike Seymour of the visual effects outlet fxguide published an account of the creation of Air Head, and it involved a large amount of human-powered editing and post-production work, including erasing unwanted portions of the generated video.
“While all the imagery was generated in SORA, the balloon still required a lot of post-work,” wrote Seymour. “In addition to isolating the balloon so it could be re-colored, it would sometimes have a face on Sonny, as if his face was drawn on with a marker, and this would be removed in After Effects. Similar other artifacts were often removed.”
“Air Head” behind-the-scenes video created by shy kids.
In a behind-the-scenes video for Air Head posted by shy kids on YouTube, the firm’s animation director, Patrick Cederberg, said, “What ultimately you end up seeing took work, time, and human hands to get it looking semi-consistent. Be that through the curation, the script writing, the editing, the voiceover, the music, sound design, color correction—all the typical post-production stuff.”
So while Sora apparently saved labor during the production of Air Head and the Toys “R” Us film, it’s not yet a turnkey solution for instantly usable video clips with consistency across generations. But it could be a sign of what is coming in advertising, whether AI critics like it or not.
“Mock that Toys ‘R’ Us AI spot all you want — but it’s just the beginning,” wrote an advertisement copywriter named Dan Goldgeier on X. “Most consumers won’t know the difference or care, and most marketers will be more than happy to make this kind of spot for less money.”
