The Fray "All At Once"

This video is the official band video of the song, and is basically a compilation of shots taken from the band's tour - on and off stage. As the pace of the song decreases, the shot transitions slow down, and then speed up as the song increases in tempo. The majority of the video is in black and white, which gives an older effect to it, and also it seems to present the band as quite traditional, yet also honest and wholesome - to be quite black and white in general: plain and simple. Colour is used to add bits of vibrancy and excitement into appropriate sections of the lyrics.

Background information: the song was released in June 2007 and the footage for the video was taken on the gig at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. The video launched on VH1's VSpot Top 20 Countdown, and it reached No.6.


This song "Over My Head (Cable Car)" is from the same album as "All At Once" and this official video is depicting a narrative that the lyrics of the song have - it was written by Isaac Slade, the lead singer and pianist of the band, about a personal experience he had with his brother, Caleb (Cable Car). Because of this, the video is set at the time of the argument in high school, so the actors (other than the band) in the video needed to be kids who looked similar to them. The main character in the video, representing Isaac, is his younger brother, Micah.

A lot of the songs by The Fray are full of emotion and personal experience, with another example being How To Save A Life (from the album of the same name, the same as All At Once and Over My Head).

In this video in particular, the emotion of the song is a very clear theme, and so was explored very well using a variety of shot types, changing angles and also a varying tempo to the transition between shots, as and when the tempo of the music changes. Direct address to the camera is a technique that is used very effectively, as it forces the audience to interact with the themes of the video - to empathise and also share in the sadness that they feel.

In all three videos, the band are in the video, and the theme/message of the song is very important, so is well linked to in the respective videos.