Fun with Fonts: My first attempt at running an editing challenge

 

I love text work in videos. I love kinetic typography. I have heard, however, that text work in AMVs is generally not the preference for audiences. Well, I like it, so I wanted to inspire people to make more cool videos with text effects.

I orchestrated the Fun with Fonts Iron Chef on my home away from home, the Bentovid Discord Server. I had people nominate fonts that were included in a pool, and then I distributed the fonts randomly to all participants. I gave everyone a title case font and a sentence case font, and there were no other restrictions on content. The goal was for people to think of the font that they chose and blend them seamlessly into the video so that the font looked intentional.

This was my first time trying to run a video editing challenge, and I really had a lot of fun. I received 16 videos, well thought out, and some REALLY exciting text work. I could talk about all of them at length, but I challenged myself to be really picky and highlight the ones that really made the text work shine.

The first video I would like to feature is by an editor named BoxJoe. He made this amazing Chainsaw Man video… song is a bop:

Watch on YouTube

His font, Hatolie, was an all-caps font. This font feels elegant, unassuming. BoxJoe combines that font with the source in a way that really works for me. The stark white and black, the moving shadows, the layers, they all work together to a really fascinating experience. The song and source pairing also feels pretty innovative. All the pieces of this come together so that the end result is more than the sum of its parts.

The second video is by SailorTardis, and it surprised me by using a trailer for an audio story. Rather than using a song, it uses spoken word:

Watch on YouTube

Her font was called Fletcher Gothic, which has an old-timey feel. It almost feels like it would be an alchemist’s handbook or on steampunk business signs. It really suits the speaker’s smooth gravitas. His voice is like a mischievous historian, telling a story with clear bias. And using a Doctor Who time travel story with Madoka Magica just feels really good.


My third video to feature, by Mr. Tired Eyes, uses electroswing, and I’m forever a sucker for electroswing…

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Mr. Tired Eyes used both his all caps font, Block Black, and his sentence case font, Decayed in 60 Seconds. This video uses text EVERYWHERE. The foreground, background, the lyrics, the effects–it’s all text. Mr. Tired Eyes fully committed to the bit. The video is so full of memes and Easter eggs you’d have to pause the video almost every second just to catch them all. If someone braver than me could translate the Morse code at 36 seconds, I’d really appreciate it. The Bee Movie script is in the background at 1:38. The text in the peripheral that bounces to the beat near the end seals the deal that this video is the perfect amount of unhinged.  

I received the font Black Wizard, which reminded me a lot of the main font used in Epithet Erased, a YouTube Series by JelloApocalypse. The theme song, Great At Crime, has always reminded me a lot of The Great Pretender. I made this for the challenge:

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Check out the whole stream on the Bentovid YouTube Channel!