Mardi Gras 2027 is Feb 9: a parade-night promo from five photos

Mardi Gras Day, also called Fat Tuesday, falls on Tuesday, February 9, 2027, and Carnival season runs from Twelfth Night (January 6) through that day, according to the NewOrleans.com Mardi Gras guide (read 2026-10-12). A 20-second promo built from five photos, a generated brass-band bed and burned-in caption cues costs $0.425 in Sume rates.

Carnival 2027 is short, 34 days from Twelfth Night to Fat Tuesday, which leaves a small shop about four weeks of posting. That is why one reusable clip, with only the cue text swapped each week, beats a new shoot.

When should the clips go out?

The season has a hard start and a hard end, so work back from both. The table counts days to Feb 9, 2027 from the dates on the NewOrleans.com page.

What goes in the five photos and the cues?

Use four seconds per photo: storefront, the special (king cake, po'boy, hurricane), a crowd or staff shot, the counter, and the address or QR card. Cues are phrase-level overlay text with start and end seconds, so the clip does not need speech.

Suggested cues: "Carnival is on" (0 to 4), "King cake from 7am" (4 to 8), "Fat Tuesday: open till late" (8 to 16), "Find us on Main St" (16 to 20). Prompt the bed as an instrumental brass band, 100 BPM, 20 seconds, no vocals.

How do I build it with the Sume API?

Import the photos first (POST /v1/media-imports), because Timeline only accepts files already hosted on media.sume.com. Still photos are static holds, so the fades carry the motion. The Music Router rejects a duration field, so put the length in the prompt.

Each call returns a job. Poll GET /v1/jobs/:id/status and read GET /v1/jobs/:id/result for the video_url, then pass that URL to the next step. You can call POST /v1/timeline-1.0/plan first: it is unbilled and returns the duration and estimated cost before you render, which is a cheap way to catch a timing mistake. The placeholder URLs below are examples only.

# 1) bed: POST /v1/music-router/generate (prompt: instrumental brass band, 100 BPM, 20-second track, no vocals) -> audio artifact
# 2) assemble five imported photos (media.sume.com URLs) over a silent spine + bed
curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/timeline-1.0/render \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: mardi-gras-timeline-001" \
  -d '{"audio":{"mode":"silence","duration_seconds":20},
       "video":[{"source_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/photo1.jpg","start":0,"duration":4},
                {"source_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/photo2.jpg","start":4,"duration":4,"transition":{"type":"fade","duration":0.5}},
                {"source_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/photo3.jpg","start":8,"duration":4,"transition":{"type":"fade","duration":0.5}},
                {"source_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/photo4.jpg","start":12,"duration":4,"transition":{"type":"fade","duration":0.5}},
                {"source_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/photo5.jpg","start":16,"duration":4,"transition":{"type":"fade","duration":0.5}}],
       "soundtrack":{"url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/bed.mp3","gain_db":-6,"fade_out_seconds":2}}'
# 3) burn authored cues on the finished MP4 (no speech needed)
curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-captions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: mardi-gras-captions-001" \
  -d '{"video_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/timeline.mp4","style":"slam","cues":[{"text":"Carnival is on","start":0,"end":4},{"text":"King cake from 7am","start":4,"end":8},{"text":"Fat Tuesday: open late","start":8,"end":16},{"text":"Find us on Main St","start":16,"end":20}]}'

What does the 20-second version cost on Sume?

The photos are yours, so there is no image or video generation line. Rates come from the Sume docs: Music 1.0 and Music Router charge $0.125 per generation, Timeline 1.0 charges $0.10 per ceil(output minute), and a standalone caption job is $0.20. Check GET /v1/catalog, the live catalog, before you budget. Five weekly variants that only change cues cost 5 x $0.20 = $1.00 in caption jobs, because you reuse the same rendered MP4.

When is this the wrong approach?

A photo slideshow with cues is the cheap, fast option. It is not the right tool for every job.

• You want original footage of a parade: a slideshow of stills will not read as one.
• Your venue needs real-time updates (route changes, street closures): post text, not a rendered clip.
• You need licensed commercial music by a named artist: the bed is generated, instrumental, and original.