Poster Analysis

In the Halloween poster the image is a painting, a convention at the time, apposed to a photograph in the Friday the 13th poster. I think they are both effective in their own way. However I think the Friday the 13th is more effective to the teenage generation because a photograph is seen as a more reliable way to show realism and therefore is more realistic, as modern expectations has expanded.

In both of the posters the background are dark if not black which ties in with the horror genre.

The mise-en scene that is included in both of these posters has a knife as the weapon which portrays that the films are in the slasher genre.

The titles are in different places but both title are the biggest font on the page.

When analysing both title typographies I found that they had in common that the typography style wasn’t scary, creepy or gloomy. I think the reason this is so that the typography doesn’t take away attention from the images but for the titles to stand out they have been put in a bright colour that standouts against black. For Halloween the colour used is orange to keep in with the associated colour of Halloween and for Friday the 13th red is used as it has connotations of blood, danger and warning

Both of the posters have taglines that are quite twisted in terms of they include a nice, warm, safe word that is put on a poster for a horror film which takes the safety away from the word which makes the audience feel indirectly scared, which is very effective.

I believe the theory of masochism; getting pleasure out of pain can be applied to posters and films especially when the target demographic is teenagers as I believe that teenagers tend to be quite masochistic, therefore when the audience feel scared they also feel pleasure , therefore the image, the title, the typography and the phrases in these posters are used and shown to be frightening because the audience gets pleasure from that feeling which attracts then to watch the movie.