{"id":40916,"date":"2026-10-27T00:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T05:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40916"},"modified":"2026-10-27T00:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T05:41:10","slug":"video-what-if-our-furry-friends-from-the-past-could-visit-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=40916","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO: What if our furry friends from the past could visit us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I made a few fun images over the weekend of my current cats as Halloween characters. Alex was a vampire. Meg was a spell-casting witch. And Oliver was originally a ghost, since his light gray fur seemed appropriate for that.<\/p>\n

But as I tried to get to sleep Sunday night, it suddenly hit me that I needed to make a Halloween short about one of the cats I\u2019ve lost as a ghost. And as the \u201calpha feline\u201d of all time in my house, Merlin was the obvious choice.<\/p>\n

So this is a one-minute short that I enjoyed creating Monday.<\/p>\n

I started with original photos of Merlin and then designed scenes in a spooky mansion for him to roam as the home he was reclaiming. OpenAI\u2019s image generator then helped me make reference images of those scenes and I edited them in Photoshop<\/p>\n

The scenes were animated \u2014 in very rudimentary ways \u2014 through a video service called Runway. I wrote the script and had the narration created in ElevenLabs. The music came from Soundstripe, which is the service I use for all my music needs.<\/p>\n

The titles were created in Photoshop and then everything was assembled in iMovie on my MacBook. (This was simple enough that Final Cut Pro would have been overkill.)<\/p>\n

I had great fun making it, so I hope it will make a few people smile. And if the moon is full for Halloween this week, don\u2019t be surprised to see Merlin back for a visit.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to watch on YouTube if the video player below isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

And if you weren’t around when the real Merlin died in 2022, here\u2019s what I wrote<\/a> at the time<\/p>\n