Watch it here.
This was done for an online contest called “Fun with Fonts.” It was a limited time event where participants were given two fonts and two weeks to make any sort of video using those fonts. I really had no strong ideas when I got my fonts, but I did have a $25 Amazon gift card so I thought it would be a fun idea to encode it into an AMV using the two given fonts. I have no real affinity for the song. I just needed something to fit the theme that this video has a mystery in it. It was the first thing I found that was not too long and fit the bill.
Here is how it decodes:
This is all done via a Caesar Cipher. The first code has every other word split into different fonts:
The first font (called Jonas) is shifted up two letters. The second font (LIVA) is shifted back by two letters. I gave no hints here. I assumed people would recognize the general structure of the sentence (especially the number) and connect it to the title of the video. Thus, it translates to: “This AMV has a $25 Amazon gift card in it.” This also establishes the pattern of Jonas fonts shifting up and LIVA fonts shifting back.
The next code is entirely in Jonas. Before this I played clips of Reinhard and Kircheis from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. They are a famous duet and, given the last code, we know Jonas fonts shift up. So these letters are shifted up by two. That leads to: “SKHF I wish Kircheis was here.”
I wanted to provide a sentence, not just the Amazon code. So people could know they had the right decoding values.
For the next code I showed clips of Eyeshield 21. You can see it uses both fonts. Take the number 21 and split it shifting the Jonas font up by two and the LIVA font down by 1. That yields: “TXBXZT Devil Bats.”
For the final code it is all LIVA. I showed clips of Alien Nine so the letters are shifted down by nine. This yields: “G5AP Weird show to be honest.”
This produces a final code of: SKHF-TXBXZT-G5AP
Despite thinking this would generate a lot of hungry puzzle solvers, alas no one got it so the $25 fell to me. Still though, fun idea I could execute on quickly. I do live in fear I messed up the puzzle somehow.