Throughout the poster, a red and black colour scheme is used within the fonts to make them stand out from one another. This signifies that one part of the text, in a certain area of the poster, is different to the rest or that the audience will read, for example, the black writing and then read the follow-on in the red. This applies to the slogan of the film ‘everybody has a secret’ which is presented in black and it’s follow-on which is presented in red and takes the slogan into more detail. This effectively gives the audience a clue as to what the film is about and persuades them to go and see it the film to see what happens. The title of the film ‘She’s the man’, also does this. ‘She’s’ is presented in black and is followed by ‘the man’ in red. This is used to make the ‘she’s’ stand out because it refers to the saying ‘you’re the man’ but has been changed to ‘she’ as the film is about a girl dressing up as a boy. This signifies the genre of the film as a Comedy. The names of the actors and actresses are presented in the red font to stand out from the black credits, situated at the bottom of the page. The same font is used throughout on the poster. For the title of the film, it is presented slightly differently to the rest of the font on the page. ‘She’s’ is presented in lower case font but is smaller than ‘man’ which is presented in capitals. ‘The’ is also presented in capitals to accompany the ‘man’ part of the title. The reason why these two words accompany each other, is to signify the change from the saying ‘you’re the man’ to ‘she’s the man’ and the audience will be able to see this clearly. However, when talking about the caption at the top of the poster, it is all shown in the same sized font. This signifies it is of the same importance. Some of the words within this, such as ‘likes’, ‘hates’ and ‘wants’ are presented in bold font which signifies the confusion within the film. The audience is more likely to take notice of these words and be intrigued by what happens in the film due to the confusion of the poster. The ellipses ‘…’ suggest there is far more to the film than that and will also make the audience want to go and see it. As for the names of the actors/actresses, the main character of the film, ‘Amanda Bynes’, has her name in the largest font, implying to the audience that she is the main character. The rest of the names are presented in the same sized font as each other, which implies that they are all of the same importance. The font used in the credits is the same as the rest but is presented in much smaller font to show it is off least importance on the poster. All of the above is situated on a plain background in order for it to stand out clearly to the audience.
The image used on the poster is of all the main characters. The image represents all of their personalities by the way they are dressed and posing. For example, the main character, Amanda Bynes, is situated in the middle of the image, in front of every one else. This insinuates she of most importance to the rest of the characters in the film. She is also dressed in black and red which refers to the colours used for the fonts throughout the poster, as mentioned before. This also signifies that she is the main character as she stands out from the rest of the characters by what she is wearing and matches the colour scheme used on the poster. The following two characters on either side of Amanda, are shown posing in the same way, showing that they are the more subtle, similar characters in the film. Whereas the last two characters on either side of these have their own unique pose. The male character is shown holding a football, which signifies he is the jock in the film who loves sports. The female character is shown putting on make-up, which signifies she is vain, unlike the other two females who don’t seem to care. The way in which the above characters are positioned, implies their importance and role within the actual film.
The shot type used in this image is a Long Shot. This is to show the whole of the characters’ bodies so that the audience can see the whole of their pose and what that represents about their personalities.
The layout of the poster follows the ‘Principle of Thirds’. At the top of the poster, there is a caption which has been placed there to follow the ‘route of the eye’ from left to right and top to bottom. This is because it wants to be seen by the audience first and this is most likely where they will look first. The ‘route of the eye’ will start at the tope of the page and to the left, continue to right, down to the left and across to the right at the bottom of page to reach the ‘terminal area’. Placed here is the credits, which signifies they are the least important thing on the poster and so have been placed here. In the ‘Primary Optical Area’, there is the image of all the main characters from the film. This shows they are the most important elements on the page as they have been placed in the middle with all the other elements surrounding it. They also take up quite a lot of space on the poster and so this would signify it’s importance, compared with the credits which are quite small. In the ‘hot spots’ of the page, there are the caption, the main image and the title which signifies they are as important as each other, compared with the credits at the bottom of the page which have been placed in the terminal area for a reason.
The mode of address on this particular poster shows that the film is a romantic comedy. I got this from the language that is used in the caption and the actual title of the film. The words that are used such as ‘wants’, ‘likes’, ‘hates’, ‘dating’, ‘crushing’ and ‘jealous’ all signify a complicated story line and this refers to the picture shown on the poster of all the characters, as you see that they will all be included in this vicious circle and therefore that makes the film funny. The title of the film ‘she’s the man’ indicates the film is funny because it contradicts itself and couldn’t be possible and so the audience will more likely want to see the film based on this. The characters shown in the image, of the vain girl compared with the main character at the front in particular, represent the conventional characters key in romantic comedies as these two characters will cross paths at some point in the film and this will make it funny. They are most likely to be fighting over one of the males shown on the poster.
The contents of the poster includes:
a slogan
a teaser paragraph on what the film is about
one image
actors/actresses names
credits
title of film
Audience theorist, Adorno, came up with the Hypodermic Model where media, such as his poster, reaches a mass audience and injects it's message into the audience. This poster would 'inject' the idea that this film would be for a wide audience as it contains both female and males sexes but would apply to teenagers more than adults due the ages shown of the characters in the film. Another audience theorist, Katz, says that groups are important in the process of influencing a certain audience. This applies to this particular poster as the image shows a group of teenagers from different social classes withing high school e.g. jock with football, popular girl with make-up and the more down-to-earth characters. Due to all the different classes, teenagers will be able to relate to at least one of these character and therefore, the creators wanted to mak the film for the wide audience but influence their audience through the different classes shown. Morley said that culture is important when shaping the audience's use of a certain media. In this case, the film would be aimed more at a white ethnicity group as no other races' are shown in the poster. However, it has been shown to apply to both male and female sexes within that race, so the film would be aimed at them. If audience members belong to this culture, they will be more likely to make sense of what is going on. Finally, in terms of audience, the cultural context shown in this poster and the types of class shown, can be linked together to create pleasures for audience members belonging to the same group as the characters shown. Bourdieu believes that, by doing this, the audience will form a relationship with certain characters by showing them truth and they will them form a relationship with the media.
Genre theorist, Steve Neale, came up with the theory that all things within a film refer to a certain genre but a film may belong to more than one. For this film inpaticular, this is true as it follows the Romantic Comedy genre, which means it belongs to two. By making films beling to a genre, the audience will be able to understand a certain film fully. Rick Altman said that once films belong to a certain genre, they fit into a mould of that particualr genre and this therefore limits the makers freedom into what they can produce within a film. For example, with reference to this poster, as it is a Romantic Comedy it has to have two poeple falling in love at the end but the film has to be made of the complications the couple go through to being together. This is shown in this poster as it shows a group of very different people being part of the relationship and also how they may get in the way of it. Will Wright said that genre should create a symbolic meaning for the audience and should reflect the social institutions and attitudes which reflect the audiences' lives and the society they live in. This applies to this poster as the language used at the top of the poster suggests to the audience the complication in teenage romance which would then refer to the comedy genre. To the audience, this would reflect their lives and the troubles they go through to get the boy/girl they want when others are in the way or other social groups stand in the way.
Signs are used in this poster, which Saussure believes to be signifcan to representation theory. He said that signs are forms of communication and stand for something to the audience who can relate to it. In this poster, the image of the boy holding the football suggests he is a jock and stereotypically they are very priud of themselves and believe they are better than everyone else. This can be seen by the fact he isn't wearing a shirt like the others which indicates his love for himself. Richard Dyer said that groups are represented through stereotypes. This can be seen in this poster as the girl in the image holding a compact mirror signifies that she is very vain and the popular girl of the school. Stereotypically every school has these people and through her appearance on the poster, the audience can understand what kind of character she is. Due to the fact they can identify her type of character, means this reflects their own school life in some way as these people do exsist. If an audience member belongs to this particular group, this will reflect how they see themselves in real life. Tessa Perkins believes that not all stereotypes are false but can be overexaggerated. In this poster, the pose of the vain girl can be seen as over exaggerated or maybe the fact the jock in shown with no shirt on. However, the fact they have certain props in the image makes the stereotype true. The clothes worn by the female characters in the poster create the illusion that the film is aimed a male audience as men would create the 'Male Gaze' when seeing the female characters. This is because they are wearing short skirts which means they would be objectified by a male audience and have been put in these outfits to signify this. Laura Mulvey explains this as men looking and women being looked at.
