Holiday mini-session promo: six sample photos in a 15-second reel

A holiday mini-session promo can be a 15-second reel of six sample photos, a music bed and one spoken booking line. On Sume the render, music and voice cost about $0.24, and upscaling all six stills first takes it to $1.44. You pay for assembly, not for a new shoot.

The idea is to show the thing a family is buying: the set, the light and a finished frame. Samples from last year's sessions do that better than a stock image, and you already own them. If a family is identifiable in a sample, check that you have their permission to use it in advertising before you post.

Which six photos go in the reel?

Pick two wide frames that show the set, two close portraits and two detail shots such as hands, texture or props. Keep one aspect ratio decision in mind: Timeline renders 1080 by 1920 by default, and each slot has a fit mode (cover, contain, stretch or blur), so a landscape photo can sit on a blurred fill instead of being cropped.

Should you upscale the stills first?

Only if your files are small. A phone screen at 1080 by 1920 is about two megapixels, so a camera original already has headroom and upscaling adds cost without a visible gain. Upscale when the sample came from a social export or a screenshot. Sume's image upscale is $0.20 per image, so six stills add $1.20.

Background removal is a separate $0.0225 per image. You do not need it here, because a mini-session reel sells the backdrop.

How is the reel assembled?

Import the six stills and the music file into the workspace, then post one Timeline render. Each still is a static hold (Timeline ignores a motion request on a still and reports it as a warning), so give each one 2.5 seconds: six slots times 2.5 seconds is 15 seconds, which rounds up to one billed minute. Put short fades between slots, because Timeline accepts transitions of up to one second on slots after the first.

Write the booking line in about 300 characters, for example the session length, the price and how to book. Speech is billed per 1,000 characters, so 300 characters is $0.01425 before rounding.

What do you do with it afterwards?

Post the same reel to the channel where your last session sold out, and keep the six slot timings in a note. Next year you replace the photos, keep the structure and render again for another ten cents. If you run three session types, make three reels from the same six-slot template, and the render line is still only $0.30 for all three. The same hosted workflow runs from the MCP tools list, where rmbg, image upscale and Timeline sit beside each other.