Christmas light installers: concept preview clips from a house photo

A Christmas light installer can send a quote with a concept preview: take the customer's house photo, use it as the first frame of a 5-second Wan 3.0 image-to-video job, and prompt warm string lights switching on along the roofline at dusk. On Sume the 720p clip is $0.625, and a caption job that labels it as a concept is $0.20 more. Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26, 2026 (Wikipedia, read 2026-10-11), which makes the first weeks of November the natural booking window.

The quote stage is where installers lose jobs: a homeowner cannot picture a price per foot of roofline. A short clip of their own house with lights is a different kind of estimate. It is also honest only if it is labelled as a concept.

How should the preview be labelled?

Burn the words Concept preview, not an exact layout into the corner of every clip with caption cues. The generated lights will not follow your actual clip spacing or bulb count. The quote document, not the video, carries the length of string, the bulb type and the price.

Ask the customer to approve the photo before you send the clip, and delete it after the season if they did not book.

What is the workflow and cost?

Start from a straight-on photo at dusk or on an overcast day. Submit one Wan 3.0 job with the photo as frame_images and frame_type set to first_frame, 5 seconds, 720p, 9:16 or 16:9 depending on the photo. Wan 3.0 accepts 2 to 30 seconds and 480p, 720p or 1080p. Burn the label with standalone captions.

For a week with ten quotes that is ten clips and ten caption jobs. Draft at 480p first if you only need the customer to say yes or no to the idea; the clip drops to $0.3125 and the look is enough to judge the color of the lights.

When do installers need it?

Use the previews while quoting in the first three weeks of November, so the install date lands before the holiday weekend. After a customer books, reuse the same photo for the done-install clip, with real footage this time.

Keep the real finished-job photos separate from previews so a reviewer can tell them apart. If a customer asks for the preview to be exact, say plainly that the video is a mood sketch and the quote sheet is the spec.

What about the safety copy?

Do not show a generated ladder scene as the way you work. Say in the voice that installs are done from the ground or with proper equipment only if that is your real practice. A preview shows the lights, not the crew.