Movie Poster Analysis

If you look closely at Friday the 13^th part poster on the left, you can see that it is a painting. Around the time this movie came out, all movie posters were painted. Then there is the poster of the Friday the 13^th remake, on the right. Immediately you can see a difference in design, detail and quality. Due to the technological advancements today, this poster looks completely different from the original. It has been edited on the computer using hi tech image editing software.

Looking at the two posters, you can see straight away the use of the colour red. Red is a sophisticated colour with many connotations such as love, charm, anger, pain, death and blood. However it is certain connotations such as anger, pain, death and blood that make the colour suitable for the specific genre of the film, slasher. The use of moonlight is similar, if not, identical in both posters. You can make out a full moon in the background. Full moon has a few connotations such as, romance, danger, death. If you look at the remake poster you can see how he covers the moon, usually on a full moon, in some movies people turn into a werewolf. So this poster is trading audience understanding of other films to understand this one, as it indicates how dangerous Jason is. The knife that Jason is holding gets significantly bigger from the original. This indicates that generic expectations are getting bigger and brasher, so the need to meet demands is very high.

In the most recent poster of the film you can see at the very top “Welcome to Crystal Lake”. If this was to be written on the original movie, it would spark confusion as no one would know what Crystal Lake is. Therefore this is an example of intertextuality, as it is trading on the audience knowledge and understanding of the two films.

One thing you notice completely different about the two posters is the text, and the amount of it. On the original poster you can see “They were warned…They are doomed…And on Friday the 13^th no one will save them” and “A 24 hour nightmare of terror”. This is used to market the film; it offers a minute insight of the film by making it sound so exclusive, which in turn gives potential viewers an incentive to watch the film. Whereas, if you take a look at the remake you will straight away notice the difference in the amount of text compared to the original. The reason behind this is simply the popularity of the films. If you consider the success of the original Friday the 13^th then its not hard to imagine what large fan base it would have, having all that information on the remake would be unnecessary, so techniques of intertextuality are being used instead. The text on the remake such as welcome to Crystal Lake refers to the original; people will know immediately what it is because of the original.

On the original poster you can see the logo of Paramount Pictures Corporation, which is a Worldwide American film production and distribution company. This means the movie is supported by a very big film company, which gives an incentive to watch the film as it indicated little can go wrong with the film. On both posters there is age rating logo of “R” which stands for restricted, this means special restrictions apply to this film. On the remake poster you can see the release date “February 13”, the colour of the text is in red and it stands out. The distribution company would have decided to have the release date on February 13 2009 as this is a Friday, this helps reference the date to the film, which makes the experience a whole lot scarier.