Poster Analysis 2.

The film above promotes the film “Friday the 13th” which was released in 2009. On the 13th February, which coincidentally falls on Friday the 13th. Those who were brave enough to watch the film on the release date potentially would have been more scared than those who watched it another day, as Friday the 13th is renowned for bad things occurring.

The poster itself follows many conventions of a film poster. The title is the biggest font within the frame, clearly indicating that that is the title of the movie, allowing the audience to focus on it and remember it. Smaller fonts including the institutional information, is placed at the bottom of the frame, out of the way in an undistinguished place so that the audience can focus on the main details. Such as the release date which is the last piece of text on the poster and is placed at the bottom so it is the last thing the audience will see and therefore remember. Lastly, the image dominates the frame allowing the audiences to have some sort of insight into the movie. In this case it is a low angle shot of the antagonist, whom is wearing a mask. This will draw the audience in because they will want to find out who it is and what their motive is.

The image dominants the frame. It is a long shot of the antagonist from a low angle, making him look stronger, more dominant and superior. It could be said that this image is present through the victim's point of view, making the audience fear the antagonist more and would also sympathise with the victims more. The general mise-en-scene of this poster allows the audience to establish it as a slasher film. The first thing to give this is away costume which is dark baggy clothing which is complete with a mask. The mask is the main item of clothing that signifies the genre, as masks are conventional in slashers. The main prop is the machete, a main part of the iconography in this poster. The audience can guess how the victims are going to slaughtered, just from looking at the weapon, which will effectively give them horrific visual imagery before they have even seen the trailer/movie. Lighting is made apparent just behind the antagonist, due to the forest scenery in the background, it is easy to establish this lighting as ambient, which is made available from the moon. Not only does the lighting show us the scenery, allowing the audience to establish where the killings take place but it also amplifies the misty fog, which will further increase the audience's fear factor.

The title of the film is “Friday the 13th” suggesting all the events occurring during the film are going to be building up to and then taking place on this date. This creates suspicion and curiosity for the audience as many people deem Friday the 13th to be ‘unlucky’ and a date when bad things happen. The font itself is written in a basic sans serif font, however it is written in caps lock which adds extra emphasis. It is written in red which gives

connotations of blood which the audience would expect to see plenty of as it is a convention of a slasher.

The tagline of the poster is presented at the top of the poster, which is a conventional location for a tagline to be place. A tagline is used in order to give the audience a further insight to the movie, which it successfully does. The tagline itself is “Welcome to Crystal Lake”, giving the audience an insight to location whereby the film is going to take place. This can be luring to the audience as they might be interested in the plot of a vast amount of killings taking place by a lake. On the contrary, this could make them dismiss watching the film altogether as it is not something they might particularly be interested in. It is written in a basic sans serif font, in capital letters which further emphasises the tagline and its importance. It is written in white which has connotations to innocence and purity, which juxtaposes with the idea that it is a slasher film. However, can relate to all the innocent people the killer will be murdering.

Institutional information is placed at the bottom of the poster, out of the way so it doesn’t distract the audience from reading the more important text on the poster such as the title, tagline and release date. Additionally, it is written in a smaller font, further highlight the idea that it is not as important as the other text presented on the poster. Just below the institutional information is the release date, which is written in a slightly larger font, which will manage to retain the audience's attention once again. It will be the last thing that the audience will see and therefore, this will stay in their minds.

The main colours presented on this poster are black, white/greyand red. All stereotypical and expected colours to be used on a horror film, more specifically a slasher. The colour black represents the darkness behind the killer and his thoughts that entices him to go out and kill people. Not only this, it represents where he will be hiding, it is very rare to see the antagonist of a slasher film in daylight, they are always under the radar. The use of the colour red signifies that there will be plenty of blood in this film, the audience would not expect anything less, as it is a slasher. The colour white could effectively represent the purity of his victims as well as youth, making their killings tragic. The colours grey and black have different connotations and can effectively tie in with human emotion. Both these colours reflect ideas of loneliness and fear, which is applicable to both the antagonist and protagonists. Allowing the audience to see a different side to the film, a tragic one, and not just the horror aspects.

Judging by the general mise-en-scene of this poster the audience are able to establish that a group of teenagers will be misbehaving somewhere near a lake, and will end up being killed by the antagonist. This is a generic storyline followed by many slashers.

However, each is made original allowing the audience not to forget them. This is a similar idea for my own trailer, however, some conventions will be changed in order to maintain originality.

This film poster successfully promotes “Friday the 13th” and entices the audience to want to watch the movie but giving them a clear indication of the narrative, without giving the story line away.