Geoff Dunbar and Paul McCartney reunite on music video, 37 years after The Frog Song

“Win or lose, sink or swim, one thing is certain we’ll never give in, side by side, hand in hand, we all stand together.” The messages within Paul McCartney’s cheerful anthem for Bafta-winning 1984 short film Rupert and The Frog Song endure to this day, and you’re sure to be singing it for days now. Just as memorable as the catchy song are the Frog Chorus who brought it to life, the creation of animator Geoff Dunbar, who has returned to work with McCartney 37 years later on the music video for his latest track When Winter Comes. It’s an apt timing for the reunion, given the track comes from McCartney III, the musician’s first number one solo record in 31 years

As director, Dunbar brought the stories behind the song to life, depicting the lives of a family on a farm and their never-ending list of jobs to do before winter arrives, surrounded by animals in beautiful Scottish countryside. “It moved me,” says Dunbar of when McCartney first played him the song. “Something happened to conjure images in my mind.”

Speaking in a behind-the-scenes film about the making of the animation, Dunbar says that while “on the face of it, the animation may look simplistic but achieving that simplicity through the disciplines of animation is dead hard”. The film was hand-drawn in pencil before being handed to the animators, then, as Dunbar describes, the pencil-drawn animation was “destructed” afterwards “by layering the paint on top, so we retain the accurate movement but we express ourselves with colour and design over the top”.

McCartney announced the album McCartney III in October 2020, unveiling an album cover designed by American artist Ed Ruscha employing his idiosyncratic type-centred acrylic paintings and his own typeface, Boy Scout Utility Modern. McCartney III is the musician’s third DIY solo album, written, performed and produced entirely by Paul McCartney at home during lockdown, with photography by his daughter Mary McCartney.