The Non/Disney Community Resource Blog

To editors trying out the dreaded amv typography/effects style editing, hopefully these tips will help you better in your experimentation :P

that being said im not gonna do any technical tutorials this is just a little observation of certain concepts…. lets do thissssss

1: Don’t Over Complicate!!!

If your starting out don’t make it more difficult, think simple animations (scale, position, rotation). kinetic typography is made up of 2 specific things: text animation and camera movement. These 2 things work together and its usually done with simple AND REPEATED animations. You don’t need to have a bunch of different movements for each word appearing on screen and I’ll explain this later on. 

2. Reveal then Appear

ironically text animation isn’t the most important aspect to kinetic typography, the camera movement is what does most of the work. Before text appears, you need to set up a space within the frame to REVEAL text. This could be as simple as cutting to a clip with a nice open spot for text to be overlayed, or if you’re going for the FX style its mostly done with the camera panning to the side or tilting up/down. 

for anyone wanting inspiration of kinetic typography I urge you to watch MDS meps they are masters and in most of their videos, they almost always reveal a hidden part of the frame to reveal text. 

You can also use motion graphics to create a new space for text to appear

3. Maintain Spatial Relationship 

If you want to animate a full sentence/line of a song within a single move/frame, it’s crucial to do it in a way that the viewer can easily see where each word “lives” within the text layout. 

^^^ I had to fit 6 words within a single frame. Once I was happy with how the end frame would look with each word getting bigger to create a box/square, I had to find a way to animate it in a way that the viewer can easily follow the text appearing while not loosing track of where they are in space. Even though it looks like the text is all over the place you can clearly see where each text is in space making it very smooth and flowy :)

4. Back Up

Kind of a knock off tip from the previous 2 but the easiest way to introduce new text is to back up (either with scale or z space). It’s easier for the viewer to follow as they can see where they once were at the same time they are being introduced to a new point in space all within the same frame.

5. Don’t Force Every Word/ Stall

if you’re doing a full line of a song (like the example in tip 3) don’t feel like every word must be shown. Sometimes certain words just don’t work well with the layout or there is simply not enough time for the movement to smoothly cover every word. Sometimes if the phrase has a lot of conjunction/ little words like: “and” “of” “the” “I” etc I’ll skip animating them. 

^^^^ for this one the line was “Sticks AND Stones,” you don’t need the “and” since when people watch, they will automatically fill in the “and” in their head… especially if you do a “stalling animation” to fill in the lost word. In this case the rotation happens when Rihanna sings “and” to give more time for “Stones” to appear in time with the song. 

Again the song is “So baby come TIE me up” but “tie” isn’t there. instead the camera pans up on that specific lyric so the movement isn’t rushed to get to “Up”

I’m not incredibly good at the animation part of typography, but aesthetically, I could also add:

Try not to use more than 2 different fonts. And try and keep it to one serif/sans-serif font and one calligraphy font.

Never use calligraphy fonts in all caps!!! EVER!

Make sure the color of the text isn’t too intense. Obviously this varies based on the style of video, but if you’re not using black or white, keep the color softer!

Try to keep your text from hitting the edge of the screen.

Always transition-in your text one way or another.

Place the text to where visually it’s not too heavy on one side when paired with that specific scene.

Sometimes I’ve seen two pieces of text together which were the same font but one was horizontally scaled wider than the other. Try to avoid this! Same goes with vertically!

That is all I have for now! Kudos to @xdivinememoriesx for this!!

But be brave and try new things out! The more you experiment and practice, the easier and more fun it actually gets - I promise ;D

Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L8NyS7xSNA

Many people have been asking me how I made this effect on my new video. I basically just followed along two tutorial videos, so I’ll link them below :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4tPRaxyloE&t=7s

A little preview/me playing around with effects for my audition for Call of the Hunted! (which is apparently blurry buttttt it won’t be in the real thing!)

-Select the mask and press autotrace (it was being weird with me when I keylighted stuff instead of rotobrushing it there and then but might work for you) (you can also use the pen tool but this takes less time and effort)

-I used these settings so it would follow the mask as opposed to only tracing one frame

-Should look a little like this (except in the shape of your mask)

-It should have created a new layer. Click that layer and go onto effect>video copilot>saber

-This should happen

-Under effect controls, click on customize core, core type, then choose layer masks from the dropdown list

-This will happen

-Right click that layer and go on blending mode, choose add

-This will happen

-Then play around with the settings and colours to your heart’s content until you’re happy with how it looks

-Voila! One pretty Saber-ed mask! 

“I will always feel the frustration of not being able to step outside of my frame…It seemed the more I listened, the more ridiculous his plans became. But for some reason, I got the feeling that if I shared his world, I would experience something different than anything I had ever experienced before…”