AN - Music Video Deconstruction 11: Derazzed

Name of Song: Derazzed
Artist: Daft Punk
Year: 2010
Genre: Electro house
Director: Warren Fu


Daft Punk is a duo that consists of French musicians, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. The duo gained popularity during the late 90's. The duo were influenced by bands such as the Rolling Stones and are well known for doing live shows, in which the mainly focuses on visual elements and effects. In 2010, Daft Punk went on to compose the soundtrack for the Disney film, Tron Legacy (2010, Joseph Kosinski) with Derazzed being one of the tracks.

• The video begins with a low angle, establishing shot of the Flynn arcade sign with the arcade itself, owned by Jeff Bridges' character in the Tron films.
• We then cut into a high angle shot of the inside of the arcade with all of the machines turning themselves on.
• Next, we get a low angle shot of two men entering the arcade with the camera focused on their feet.
• The camera pans on the duo's feet walking towards an arcade machine which has the same name as the song.
• We get an extreme close up of the machine's name.
• The setting of video changes from reality to the world of the arcade game.
• We get several close ups of the different parts of the armour which Player 1's character is wearing.
• Then the character positions themselves into the light cycle position, which is intertexual to the Tron films.
• We get close ups of the character riding the light cycle which transforms into a horse.
• After that, we cut to Player 2's character who looks the same as the other character, except that he's red. This creates a binary opposition, since red and blue are the primary colours used to represent good and evil.
• A mixed of fast-paced and slow-paced editing is used in the video. Slow for the sequences in the arcade and fast-paced for the jousting sequences.
• We then get a over-the-shoulder shot of a hooded man watching the fight with a robotic bird which resembles Laserbeak from the Transformers universe.
• The hood is a narrative enigma.
• The video ends with a close up of the game over screen and the loser hitting the joystick in frustration. Besides that, the winner takes off their helmet and it's revealed that the character was a girl.
• The winner being a girl = feminist view?

Here is the video: