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I'm entering a Sora short in a festival. What record should I keep?

2026-10-16 · OpenStela

Keep three things: the exact file you submit, everything that shows what you did around the generated footage, and a short statement of your contribution written in verbs. Then give the submission file a dated, verifiable record before you upload it to the festival. Do it a day or two before the deadline, not on the night itself.

This matters more for Sora than for most tools, because the place you'd normally point to is gone. OpenAI shut down the Sora app and website on April 26, 2026, and its help center says it will permanently delete Sora data once any final export window closes. Your generation history won't back you up at a festival Q&A, in a rules dispute or in a copying claim a year from now. What you exported is what you have. Below is what to keep, how to date it, and what the record does and doesn't say.

Sora's own history won't be there to show

According to OpenAI's help article What to know about the Sora app discontinuation (checked October 16, 2026):

• The Sora web and app experiences were discontinued on April 26, 2026.
• The Sora API was scheduled to be discontinued on September 24, 2026.
• Users were told to export their Sora content "as soon as possible", and data associated with Sora will be permanently deleted after any final export window.

If you made your short earlier this year, the generations, prompts and timestamps in your Sora library were the obvious evidence of when you made what. Read the help article for the current state of exports. Whatever you did get out of it, treat that export as the only copy and back it up in two places today.

What you could do with Sora outputs, and what OpenAI could do with your inputs, is set by OpenAI's terms. Read the Terms of Use and any service terms that applied to your account. Festivals ask about rights, and the answer starts there, not with us.

What to keep in the folder

Make one folder for the entry and put these in it. None of it needs special software.

1. The submission file, exactly as you upload it. Not a re-export with "the same settings". A fingerprint matches only identical bytes. If the festival portal transcodes your upload, the copy on your drive is still the one your record refers to.
2. The Sora exports you started from. The raw clips, before you cut them. They show what the model produced on its own. The difference between those and the finished short is your contribution.
3. Your edit project and its assets. The project file from Premiere, Resolve or CapCut, your music and sound files, any footage you shot, the title cards you designed.
4. Your own inputs. The script, the shot list, storyboard frames, reference images you drew or photographed, any image you fed into Sora as a starting frame.
5. A contribution note. One paragraph, written now while you remember. More on this below.
6. The festival's rules and your entry confirmation, saved as a PDF or a screenshot with the date. Rules change between editions, and you want the version you entered under.

That folder is useful on its own. The weakness of a folder is that anything in it can be edited later, including the dates. That's what the record fixes.

Give the festival cut a dated record before you upload it

Register the submission file on the works page. It's free to register. Uploaded works share 300 MB of space per account, and there's a daily cap on how many works one account can register (see pricing).

1. Choose Register a work and upload the mp4 or webm. Video files can be up to 100 MB. If your master is bigger, register the export you actually submit and keep the master next to it.
2. Title: the film's title, plus "festival cut" if you'll make other versions.
3. Attribution: the name the film is credited under. A pen name or studio name is fine, as long as it's the one on the entry form.
4. Created on: the date you finished this cut, if you know it. Leave it blank if you don't. It's recorded as your claim, next to the registration date we set.
5. Tick This work was made with AI tools and list them under Which tools: Sora, plus your editor, music tool and voice tool.
6. Write Your contribution. It's required for AI-assisted work.
7. Pick the rights declaration that's true: My own work, or I hold a licence if, say, the score is licensed.
8. Decide on Show on my public page. Some festivals care about premiere status. You can register with it off and switch it on after the screening. A private record still exists and still gets anchored. Turning it public later doesn't change its date.
9. Register.

The record gets its fingerprint straight away: the SHA-256 of the video file. It goes into that night's batch, which is anchored to Arbitrum One at 19:20 UTC. After that, anyone with the same file can recompute the fingerprint and match it to the chain without trusting us. The record itself can't be edited later. You can change the title, the note and the public switch, nothing else.

When the batch has run, download the record's Proof Pack from the work's menu and put it in the folder. It holds the record, the chain proof and the record card image.

If you cut a new version after the festival, register it as a new work. Two records with two dates show the order of versions better than one record you wish you could update. How do I put a date on an AI video? explains why a file record is stronger than a link record, and five ways to prove a file existed on a date compares this with the alternatives.

Write the contribution like someone will check it

The contribution field is where most AI film entries are weakest, and where a festival form, a distributor or a copyright office will look first.

The U.S. Copyright Office's Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (January 29, 2025) says in its summary (p. iii) that "copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements", and that "prompts do not alone provide sufficient control." It's more encouraging about film. On p. 27: "a film that includes AI-generated special effects or background artwork is copyrightable, even if the AI effects and artwork separately are not." Your script, your edit, your sound and your own footage are the human part. The Sora clips on their own aren't.

The Office's registration guidance (effective March 16, 2023) asks applicants to disclose AI-generated content, give "a brief explanation of the human author's contributions", and exclude AI-generated content "that is more than de minimis". Taiwan's IP Office takes a similar line. In 電子郵件1141017b (October 17, 2025), it said AI output is protected only where there was actual human creative input, and that content completed by the AI alone isn't. Under Taiwan's Copyright Act, Article 10, copyright arises when the work is completed, with no registration step. How much do I have to do for an AI work to be protected? walks through these sources in more detail.

So write what you did, in verbs, and say which parts were the model's:

Wrote the script and a 22-shot list. Drew the storyboard; used four of my frames as Sora starting images. Generated about 140 clips in Sora and kept 19. Cut, timed and colour-graded in Resolve. Shot the two hand close-ups myself. Composed the score in Logic. Voice-over is mine. The landscapes and the crowd scenes are Sora output, used as generated.

Leave out adjectives. If the honest answer is "prompted, picked and trimmed", write that. A modest, exact statement holds up better than a generous one, because the raw Sora exports in your folder will be compared with it. We don't check the text, and we don't judge the film. The record shows that you said this, about this file, on this date.

Read the festival's rules, and know what the record doesn't do

Every festival writes its own rules, and they differ on whether AI-generated work is eligible, what you must disclose, premiere requirements, and who has to own the music and footage. Read the rules for the edition you're entering and answer their questions directly. Your contribution note will usually give you the words. If a rule is unclear, ask the organisers in writing and keep the reply in the folder.

A registration doesn't answer any of those questions for you. It shows that this exact file existed on that date, under the name you gave, with the tools and contribution you wrote down. It doesn't prove you're the author or that you own the footage. It isn't a copyright registration, and it doesn't make the film eligible for anything. What it gives you is a fixed point. If the same short turns up under someone else's name, or someone says it was changed after the deadline, you have a dated, verifiable record to point to. It's evidence if a dispute comes up. What a character ID proves, and what it doesn't explains where that line sits.

If you run a festival yourself, the platforms page shows how to register every entry as it arrives, with one API call. This is general information, not legal advice.