Hogmanay Dec 31 pub promo: a first-footing bundle clip from one photo

For a Hogmanay promo, photograph your first-footing bundle (shortbread, black bun and a bottle, say), animate that still into a 5 to 8 second clip, and burn the pickup deadline on as caption cues. Hogmanay is December 31, which in 2026 is a Thursday, and Scotland keeps January 1 and 2 as public holidays, so your last-collection time matters more than the artwork.

What is first-footing, and what goes in the bundle?

Wikipedia says the best-known Hogmanay custom is first-footing, which starts right after midnight: the first person to cross a friend's or neighbor's threshold sets the luck for the year. Symbolic gifts include salt, coal, shortbread, whisky and black bun, a rich fruit cake.

That list is a ready-made product bundle for a deli, off-licence or bakery. Photograph the bundle on a doorstep or table, and the story explains itself in two seconds.

How should the clip be built?

Use the bundle photo as first_frame on POST /v1/videos and keep the motion small: a door opening toward the camera, light spilling across the table. The Sume docs list the supported durations and resolutions per model in GET /v1/videos/models, so read that before you set duration. Video is asynchronous: submit, poll the job, then download.

Whisky is age-restricted advertising in many places. If your bundle includes alcohol, check the platform's ad rules before paying to promote it, and consider an alcohol-free hero shot of the shortbread and black bun.

Which cues carry the offer?

Burn text on afterwards with video captions cues, each with text, start and end. Because a promo clip is usually silent or music-only, authored cues are the right path; speech-to-captions on a silent file fails with caption_no_speech.

A workable set for a 6 second clip: "First-footing bundle", "Collect by 4 pm Dec 31", "Closed Jan 1 and 2". Replace the times with your own. Do not claim a delivery guarantee your shop cannot keep.

What can go wrong?

• Putting the price in the video prompt. Generated numerals drift; use cues.
• Forgetting that Jan 2 is also a holiday in Scotland, so collections may need to end on Dec 31.
• Posting before checking the file: open the finished clip and read every cue.

Which model should you pick, and how do you keep spend bounded?

Do not guess at model limits. The Sume video guide says to read GET /v1/videos/models before submitting, because limits differ per model: for example wan-3.0 accepts 2 to 30 seconds, seedance-2.5 accepts 4 to 30 seconds at 480p, 720p and 1080p, and gemini-omni-flash-1.1 accepts 3 to 10 seconds. The same catalog carries pricing_skus, so you can read the price of the length and resolution you want before you spend anything.

For a social story, a short clip at a modest resolution is enough; a higher tier costs more and a phone screen rarely shows the difference. Draft once at the lowest tier that looks right, check the cues and the dates, and only then decide whether a second render is worth it.

Keep the idempotency habit too. Where an endpoint requires an Idempotency-Key, reuse the same key when you retry the same request so a network error does not create a duplicate job.