Ancillary Product #1: Poster Research // Comedy

The Inbetweeners (2014)

It's clear that posters follow a template structure where you can find the title at the bottom of the poster, along with the rest of the production details. At the top will be the tagline and in the center it's common to either see a piece of iconography significant to the film's plot, or the main character/s themselves. In this poster the layout is very conventionally of film posters with the above tagline reading: "Four reasons to get out of Australia". In pairing this tagline with the 4 characters below, the comedy genre instantly sets itself in motion as it implies that these characters are the reason why no one should be in Australia. Since the film is the second in the film sequence, the poster designers were then able to play around with the tagline to make it link more closely to the characters/ plot. Whilst this may come off as something associated with a horror, the bright colours suggest that the film concentrates on 'happy affairs' as opposed to a forbidding, evil demon/event which is found in horror films. The fact that 'the inbetweeners' are the characters involved (instantly recognisable to a British audience) immediately gives us the reading that this is a comedy movie. Fans of the programme and former film will therefore know that the 4 characters often make a lot of mistakes and can be quite stupid. This gives a whole new level of meaning to the tagline which suggests the reason why people should leave Australia is that destruction is likely to be left behind by the 4 guys. Thus comedy is created because it suggests that 'the inbetweeners'' stupid antics will be just the same as what's found in the TV series, causing hilarity in its wake. The comedy doesn't end there, since another tagline follows the title: "Soz, Oz". The language is very informal which further validates our inference that the narrative will follow the characters' acts of stupidity. It also suggests that these 4 British characters will be just as likely to make Australia hate them because of how odd, inappropriate and idiotic they behave.

*The fact "the" is in the middle of "bet" is comical because it's in between the words "inbetweeners" which creates irony and thus informs us that the film's genre is comedy.

The title uses blue typography which echoes the colour of the sky in summer, thus also echoing the warmth of Australian weather. It also has no upper case typography which validates the reading that the characters and what will happen in the film revolves around 'the inbetweeners' being unintelligible.