Cake Premiere Fan-Shot Video For ‘The Winter’
Never a band to settle for traditionalism, Cake‘s video for ‘The Winter’ was shot entirely by their fans. On March 20, the band released the video, which features the band’s audience lip-syncing the song.
As you would expect from Cake, sincerity is mixed with sweetness in the clip. Some participants look pensive in their close-up; others dance along, play musical instruments, or play “air trumpet” during the solo. One person even uses sign language. According to its YouTube page, the video included “over 170 participants, aged 5 to 55, from 165 different cities in 20 countries on 5 continents.”
In a letter posted on the band’s website, director Tracy Rowland thanked all those who submitted videos for the project, and claimed that the process of piecing it together was “like a big game of human Tetris.”
He also went into detail about the process in selecting what footage made the final cut. Rowland preferred interesting backgrounds, brightness over dark shadows and still cameras over handheld. He concluded the letter by saying, “Every single face in this video is important. Whether yours is up for two seconds or 2/5ths of a second; taking up the entire screen of just a fraction, it matters to us and to the song, and we’re so grateful to you fro being a part of ‘The Winter.’”
The song comes from Cake’s album ‘Showroom of Compassion,’ which was released in January 2011.
Watch the Video for ‘The Winter’ by Cake