Air Head

Air Head is a short film of about 81 seconds, made by the Toronto production company shy kids with OpenAI's text-to-video model Sora. Walter Woodman wrote and directed it, Sidney Leeder produced it, and Patrick Cederberg handled post-production. The group posted it on X on 25 March 2024, calling it "one of the first short films made using #Sora", and OpenAI published it that week on its Sora first-impressions page, with a YouTube upload dated 5 April 2024.

fxguide's April 2024 interview with Cederberg says the three-person team finished it in roughly a week and a half to two weeks. Sora had no way to lock a character's look between shots, so they wrote detailed prompts for the balloon and wardrobe and used the keyword "35mm" for a consistent look. Cederberg estimated hundreds of generations of 10 to 20 seconds each, a ratio of about 300 to 1 against the final cut, and the team approached the edit like a documentary built from a pile of footage. Clips were generated at 480p for speed and upscaled with Topaz Video AI. In After Effects they removed stray faces and strings, recoloured the balloon, retimed footage Sora had slowed to roughly 50 to 75 percent speed, and added a full grade with grain and flicker. Sora also refused some prompts, among them a request in a director's style. A pan from jeans up to the balloon was made by rendering in portrait and cropping in post.

The human parts are the writing, voice-over and music. MIT Technology Review reports that the team wrote and performed the voice-over themselves, and fxguide says Cederberg voices Sonny and that the soundtrack is "The Wind", an existing song from shy kids' back catalogue. Woodman told MIT Technology Review that the attempt was "mostly successful" and that "the technology is nothing without you". He called Sora "a slot machine" in a behind-the-scenes video the group posted on X.

shy kids is a pop band and filmmaking collective that fxguide nicknames "punk-rock Pixar" and credits with Emmy nominations and an Oscar longlisting. According to MIT Technology Review, it made a music video with the open-source Stable Warpfusion the year before, and OpenAI asked the group to try Sora. When the trio gave a behind-the-scenes account of the film, it described the balloon as a way to sidestep the problem of keeping a face consistent. fxguide says a sequel about Sonny's reaction to fame was in development.

On release the film drew views across several accounts. OpenAI's TikTok post had 494,200 views and its YouTube upload 248,423, shy kids' own YouTube upload 202,917, and a re-upload linked here 171,423, all read on 7 October 2026. Coverage in MIT Technology Review called OpenAI's batch of Sora films amazing and a big step up from its earlier demos. Viewers on X pointed out the balloon changing size between shots, and fxguide's account stresses the amount of human editing and direction it needed.

fxguide presents Air Head as one of the first public demonstrations of what a small team could do with early Sora access, and notes that the team saw the tool as a supplement and planned to combine Sora elements with live action next. Curious Refuge's gallery lists it as showcasing the future of filmmaking.