Drone-style aerial shot with Seedance 2.5: 12 seconds, $3.22 at 480p

A 12-second drone-style aerial move on seedance-2.5 costs about $3.22 at 480p on Sume, and roughly $6.93 at 720p. Prompt the camera like a flight plan, one path per clip, and test at 480p before paying for a higher tier.

ByteDance lists professional camera movement among Seedance 2.5's strengths (read 2026-10-07, Seed). Sume's docs describe the id as a text, image and reference-to-video model with 4 to 30 second clips (video router docs).

A prompt structure for a flight path

Write the shot in the order a pilot would: starting altitude, the move, the heading, and the end point. One move per clip beats several, since a 12-second shot with three changes of direction tends to lose its subject.

• Start: "High angle, 120 m above a coastal road at sunrise."
• Move: "Slow descent while flying forward along the road."
• End: "Settle low over the lighthouse, horizon level."
• Keep: "No cuts, steady speed, no text."

Price

Seedance 2.5 is billed by output tokens on Sume (width x height x seconds x 24 / 1024), at $0.0214 per 1,000 tokens for 480p and 720p and $0.0234 for 1080p, times 1.25. That gives about $1.07 for 4 seconds at 480p, $8.06 for 30 seconds at 480p, and $42.65 for 30 seconds at 1080p. Twelve seconds at 480p works out to about $3.22.

Copy a move from a real clip

If you have real aerial footage, send it as a video_url entry in input_references. Seedance accepts video references, and ByteDance says the model captures the framing and cinematic language of a reference, not only the motion (Seed, read 2026-10-07). Add a still of the location as an image reference to keep the look.

Caveats

The result is a generated scene, not a survey. Do not use it to represent a real property or location in a way that implies it was filmed there. If you need real aerial footage, hire a pilot.

Practical notes

Check the horizon and the scale of objects in every take. Generated aerial shots often get proportions wrong, such as cars too large for the road. If the clip is for an explainer or a mood piece this is fine; for a real-estate or construction use it is a reason to use real footage.

To lower the cost of iteration, test the path at 4 seconds and 480p for about $1.07, and only extend to 12 seconds once the first four look right.