Museum exhibit teaser: Seedance 2.5, images and audio, no surcharge

A Seedance 2.5 teaser built from artifact photos and a narration clip costs $5.78 for 10 seconds at 720p on Sume, or $2.69 at 480p. Adding a reference video to the same request would raise it to $8.67, so for an exhibit teaser, stick to images and audio.

What references do here

A museum teaser must show the real object. Reference images let you send several angles of a sculpture, a manuscript page or a costume. An audio reference lets you supply the curator's recorded line so the pacing follows it. fal's Seedance 2.5 explainer, read 2026-10-08, lists up to 50 reference files per request in the reference endpoint: 30 images, 10 videos and 10 audio files, with about 30 seconds in each of the video and audio pools.

Sume's Seedance 2.5 entry lists reference images, reference videos and reference audio, 4 to 30 seconds, and 480p, 720p and 1080p. In Sume's pricing code the 15-second reference-video assumption is the only path that changes the bill; images and audio do not.

Prices

Sume bills the provider list price times 1.25, rounded up to the cent per job.

Respecting the collection

Generated motion on a real artifact is an interpretation, not documentation.

• Label the teaser as a visualisation if the object does not move in life.
• Confirm image rights for the loan and the photographer, not only the museum's own holdings.
• Keep the real accession details in caption text; do not prompt for inscriptions.
• Draft at 480p ($2.69) and show the curator before the 720p final.

Submit it and read the result

Sume reserves the billable amount from your workspace USD balance when the job is submitted, then returns a polling_url. Add reference images and an audio reference through input_references once the draft prompt is right. Poll the job until status is completed or failed; a completed job lists its files in unsigned_urls.

import os
import time
import requests

H = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SUME_API_KEY']}"}
body = {
    "model": "seedance-2.5",
    "prompt": "A slow push-in on the scene, soft natural light",
    "duration": 10,
    "resolution": "480p",
    "aspect_ratio": "16:9",
}
r = requests.post("https://api.sume.com/v1/videos", headers=H, json=body, timeout=60)
r.raise_for_status()
url = r.json()["polling_url"]
while True:
    job = requests.get(url, headers=H, timeout=30).json()
    if job["status"] in ("completed", "failed"):
        break
    time.sleep(10)
print(job["status"], job.get("unsigned_urls"))

Limits

fal's page lists 480p and 720p for Seedance 2.5, and Sume's catalog also lists 1080p; the 1080p column follows the Sume catalog and I did not render it. I did not find a Seedance-specific cap on reference counts in Sume's own request validation, so the provider's limits above are the ones to plan for.