Animatic on Wan 3.0: six 5 s shots, approve, redo, upgrade

Six 5-second Wan 3.0 shots at 480p cost $1.875 in total, $0.3125 each, which is exactly the price of one 30-second 480p job. Splitting an animatic by shot costs nothing extra and lets you reject one shot without paying for the other five (read 2026-10-09).

One 30-second job or six shots

An animatic is a moving storyboard, so the shots matter more than the polish. Wan 3.0 is flat per second, so there is no price penalty for splitting and a clear benefit: each shot gets its own prompt and its own first frame from the storyboard panel.

One request per panel

Loop the panels, give each job its own idempotency key built from the shot number, and submit them in parallel; the admission queue holds back what a plan cannot run yet. This builds the body for one panel.

import os, time, requests

API = "https://api.sume.com/v1/videos"
H = {"Authorization": "Bearer " + os.environ["SUME_API_KEY"]}
body = {"model": "wan-3.0", "prompt": "Shot 3: low angle, the hero steps into the doorway, camera tilts up to the skyline", "duration": 5, "resolution": "480p", "aspect_ratio": "16:9", "frame_images": [{"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": "https://example.com/panel-03.png"}, "frame_type": "first_frame"}]}
job = requests.post(API, headers={**H, "Idempotency-Key": "animatic-shot-03"}, json=body, timeout=60).json()
deadline = time.time() + 1800
while time.time() < deadline:
    time.sleep(30)
    job = requests.get(job["polling_url"], headers=H, timeout=60).json()
    if job["status"] == "completed":
        print(job["unsigned_urls"][0], job["usage"]["cost"])
        break
    if job["status"] in ("failed", "cancelled"):
        print(job["status"], job.get("error"))
        break

Approve, redo, then upgrade

A realistic flow: render six shots at 480p ($1.875), redo two of them ($0.625), then upgrade the approved six to 720p ($3.75). The total is $6.25.

Skipping the animatic and rendering six 720p shots directly costs $3.75 with no safety net. If even two shots need a redo at 720p, that adds $1.25.

An animatic exists to catch problems cheaply. The most common are a subject that changes between shots and a camera move that fights the next shot's start frame. Both show up at 480p.

Limits

• Per-shot jobs do not share continuity: character and light can change between shots unless each panel carries the reference.
• Wan 3.0 accepts up to 10 reference images per request, which covers a character sheet plus a location.
• A queue_full response means wait for a terminal job or cancel one you no longer need, then retry with the same key.
• Re-render only the shots the director rejects at 720p; two rejected shots at 720p add $1.25.