School principal weekly update: a 40-second avatar clip, 36 weeks

A weekly principal's update is read by few parents when it is a PDF and by many more when it is a short video on the school app. Recording it every Friday is a burden on a busy week. An avatar can read a script the office writes. Here is what the school year costs.

A school year of clips

Forty seconds is about 100 words: a welcome, three dates and one reminder. At standard that is 40 x $0.184 = $7.36 a week. A 36 week year is 36 x $7.36 = $264.96. At plus the week is $9.80 and the year $352.80.

Keep it short

The route accepts 4 to 60 seconds, estimated from the script. If the script is too long it fails before generation, so trim it. A 20 second version, with two dates only, costs $3.68 at standard, and halves the yearly total to $132.48.

A script frame

Fix the structure so only dates change: greeting, the week's three dates, one reminder, sign-off. Burn in captions: many parents watch on a phone with the sound off, and a caption helps those who read English as a second language.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/avatar-1.0/talking-video \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"avatar_handle":"@host","quality":"plus","aspect_ratio":"9:16","captions":{"enabled":true,"style":"tiktok-green"},"script":"Good morning, families. This week: picture day on Tuesday, the book fair on Thursday, and early dismissal on Friday. Please check the folder in your child backpack. Have a good week."}'

Disclose it

Tell families the announcement is read by an AI avatar. Do not build the avatar from a staff member's photo without consent.

Reuse and cost control

Most weeks share a skeleton, so write the script in a spreadsheet with a column for each date and merge them. Render at standard; use plus only for the first week of the term and the last. Using plus for 2 of 36 weeks and standard for the rest costs 2 x $9.80 + 34 x $7.36 = $269.84, about $5 more than all-standard.