Yeah…If You Could Umm Come In on Saturday, That’d Be Great

Office Dog

Re-Casting Office Space With a Great Dane Boss and a Slacker Mutt

Turning a “ruff” week into a 20-second cult-classic parody (with zero Hollywood budget)

Picture a gray 1990s cubicle farm. A hulking Great Dane in a pastel tie leans against a partition, coffee mug in paw. Opposite him, a mixed-breed “Peter” stares daggers through fluorescent gloom, already spiritually clocked out for the weekend.

I adore that scene, the syrupy “Ummm, yeah…” that makes every dev’s soul leak out of their nostrils. So when DIY generative-video tools finally felt within reach, I recast the whole bit with my dogs. Result: a low-stakes creative sprint that doubled as a crash course in prompt-engineering, scope control, and the fine art of letting “good enough” ship.

Tool Chain on a Dog Tail

Phase	Tool	30-Second Verdict
Storyboard & Still-Frame Layout	Canva	Fast drag-and-drop mock-ups; perfect for dog-blocking (pun intended).
Character Cut-outs	Photoshop	One-click background removal is witchcraft.
Motion & Lip-Sync	Runway ML – Gen-2	Nailed the Dane’s head-tilt after ~20 prompt tweaks.
Final Assembly	CapCut	Drag, drop, trim, export—no drama.
Thumbnail & Captions	Canva again	YouTube’s algorithm loves colorful thumbnails; I love Canva’s templates.

Five Things I Learned (So You Don’t Have To)

1. Dialogue First, Prompts Second: Feed Runway the audio clip first; visuals align faster when the model “hears” what it’s animating. This took me the longest to figure out!

2. Be Specific: “Dog in business casual” produced clown suits and Yorkies. Using Runway I was able to merge two photos together to produce my Dane Boss and pathetic Peter.

3. Iteration Is King - I struggled getting Runway to give me what I pictured in my head it took a few rounds to get it right then I still needed to do some blending in Photoshop. Dog collars don't go well with collared shirts.

4. AI Makes Accidental Comedy: In one round of creation a human face just randomly pops in the video and is speaking the same type as the dog. It was so stupid but funny.

5. Fair Use ≠ Free Pass: Twenty seconds of parody is usually safe.

Lumbergh’s whole deal is scope creep “just this one little Saturday, Oh and I almost forgot.. I need you to come in Sunday too”

As leaders always respect constraints, protect weekends, and remember no one’s sprint velocity is worth their sanity.

I treated the project like a mini-sprint:

1. Backlog Grooming: List key beats (coffee-mug tilt, dead-eye stare).

2. Time-Box: Four hours then hard stop.

3. MVP: Publish even if the lip-sync’s 90 % there.

4. Retro: Write this post.

   
   

Tiny creative experiments sharpen the same muscles we use modernizing legacy code: ruthless scoping, rapid iteration, and releasing imperfect but delightful increments.

Ready to ditch TPS reports for treat-dispensing scripts? Grab a camera, bribe your pets with bacon, and let generative AI do the weekend overtime. Drop your bloopers in the comments I’ll bring the popcorn, and the dog treats ;).

Check out the video in my Instagram Reel

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