We Made This Social Video for the Eagles with Merrill Reese!
When the pandemic blew up our world in early 2020, we thought it would be end of days for unPOP. We were forced to move our studio home (into our former bedroom). But it led to a hometown partnership we never dreamt of getting!
We teamed up with the Philadelphia Eagles to create an animated short titled, “Merrill’s Memories,” which depicts legendary Eagles announcer Merrill Reese. In the animation, Reese recalls the famous 1995 play in which the Eagles stopped the Dallas Cowboys twice on fourth-and-one to secure a win against their biggest rival.
“It’s Groundhog Day! They stop him again!” exclaimed Reese while covering one of the Eagles’ most memorable plays in franchise history. “I didn’t know that anyone would even know what I was talking about, but it became one of my most famous calls of all-time,” Reese says in his narration.
In February 2021, the Eagles — who had worked with us before (on Eagles Wine- yep it’s a thing superfans! Check it out here) — were looking for video content during the pandemic. They asked us to create a two-minute stop-motion short featuring Reese narrating the famous 1995 play. In the animation, we see Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day hanging out with Merrill in the press box while he calls the animated play.
To Quote Peter (who was SO EXCITED to meet Merrill Resse -even if it was just on zoom): “We’ve been making animations for more than eight years, but we never had a dream project as fun as this collaboration with the Eagles. …They came to us with the amazing idea of recreating some of Merrill Reese’s memories from the last 44 seasons, and after interviewing Reese, we decided on highlighting the Eagles – Cowboys rivalry with his famous Groundhog Day call.”
In all, we created 45 hand-painted puppets, as well as 3,500 individual photographs displayed at 24 frames per second, with three months of production and three weeks of editing. The end result was a two-minute video, which received more than 150,000 views on social media.
If you want to see Pete and I get local news famous check us out here:
ABC Interview and our local Fox News
Photos from the Shoot- Click to enlarge
Merrill’s Memories
(Directors Cut with Bill Murray and Gin and Tonics)
We had so much fun creating this short for the Philadelphia Eagles. We were so excited when everyone else seemed to like it too! Check out our Director’s Cut where we pay homage to one of our favorites, Bill Murray.
Behind the Scenes
Everyone always asks how we make this stuff. We set up some goPros to capture it for you! Check out our “How we made that” here!