The New King of Short-Form Video

Runway just released Gen-4.5, and for once, the benchmark numbers aren't misleading. With an Elo score of 1247, it's sitting at the top of the Artificial Analysis leaderboard, ahead of Google's Veo 3 and OpenAI's Sora 2 Pro. A ~100-person startup outperforming tech giants on a specialized task isn't something you see often.

But: Gen-4.5 is a specialist and you have to know what it is actually good at.

While Google's Veo leans into minute-long explainers and OpenAI packages Sora into ChatGPT's ecosystem, Runway built Gen-4.5 for a specific job: short, high-impact video that looks like you shot it with a $50,000 camera rig. Think product reveals, hero shots, social ads, the first 3 seconds of a reel that decide whether someone keeps watching.

What sets it apart are the physics. Objects move with actual weight. Liquids flow correctly. Fabric responds to motion. Hair doesn't turn into a morphing blob mid-shot. The detail consistency—textures, lighting, spatial relationships—holds through 4-8 second clips without the usual AI "drift" where things subtly warp or disappear.

Where this matters most: the stuff you'd normally need a production crew for.

Complex product demos where the camera needs to orbit, push in, and track smoothly. Emotional close-ups where facial expressions actually sell the moment. Surreal brand film sequences that would cost five figures to shoot practically. Gen-4.5 handles camera language better than previous models—you can write detailed shot descriptions ("handheld documentary style, slight push-in to close-up, low angle") and it follows them with surprising accuracy.

The limitations are still there, and Runway is transparent about them. Object permanence is shaky—things can vanish after being blocked from view. Causal reasoning is unreliable, so you'll occasionally see effects happen before their causes. Long-form consistency isn't solved. If you need a character to appear consistently across multiple scenes, you're still in post-production hell.

But for what it's designed to do—punchy, single-shot content—it's the best option available right now.

The practical move: treat Gen-4.5 as your specialist for high-production-value moments under 10 seconds. Use it for hooks, transitions, hero visuals, and the stuff that makes people stop scrolling. For longer narratives, you'll still want Veo-style models or traditional production. For integrated workflows, Sora's ecosystem has advantages.

But if you need that one shot that looks expensive? Runway just became your first call.

— Torsten & Peter

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