Friday the 13th Poster evaluation : Research and Planning

Friday the 13th is a 2009 American horror film directed by Marcus Nispel, and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. Friday the 13th follows Clay Miller (Padalecki) as he searches for his missing sister, Whitney (Righetti), who is taken by Jason while camping in the woods at Crystal Lake.

• Starting with the background, its dark in a woodland location which would be the perfect hiding place for a killer as it would be really hard to hunt someone down amongst the trees. There will be no one there for back up and finding help could be impossible.

• The poster also uses the tag line "Welcome to crystal lake" this sounds like a small holiday destination for a family to go to. A basic storyline that the poster may be trying to tell the audience is that a group of people go to a holiday destination and are tormented by a killer.

• To the main part of the poster which is a low angle shot of the killer, this you can tell from the the machete he/she is holding and the mask to cover the face. The low angle shot also indicates that he/she is going to be the superior character in the film. This is the clearest genre indicator for the film which is horror.

• The title of the film is Friday the 13th, this straight away makes people aware of what will happen as Friday the 13th is from the myth of everyone getting bad luck. This makes the audience aware that the film is not going to be a jolly film. Not just that the font the title is in is red, this may symbolise blood that will may be spilt in the film. The small tag line above the title which says "From the producers of the Texas chainsaw massacre", this was a very hit horror film in 1974, which they recently remade in 2003. People who were big fans of the Texas chainsaw massacre may go watch this film as they share the same producer and maybe filmed in a similar way.

• Finally all the production companies involved in the film are listed right at the bottom of the poster as well as the date of release. The producers have been very specific about the date which is February 13th, which was on a Friday.

Overall i think this is a very effective poster as it leaves lots of enigma for the audience, questions such as who is the killer? Why he/she is killing? How will it be stopped? Why at crystal lake? I feel the more enigma that the audience has to solve the more people will want to find out for them selves and watch it. From the poster the target audience is definitely going to be adults, maybe late teens depending on the amount of violence in the film.