Film fare a highest selling film magazine in India. But is it really good nowadays?
Noooooooooooooo.
Y?!
1) It is just an album of sexy portfolios of glamour dolls of bollywood. What is the use of it? Simply the teens will tare their favorite’s photos from the book and paste in the walls of their hostel rooms.
2) They don’t have any standard format of write-ups.
3) No articles are there with good analysis.
4) I don’t like stuffs like rumors and the happenings in the personal life of the artists and technicians behind the screen. Why these magazines are concentrating on creating new rumors and keep on disturbing our artists. Leave them alone. As a powerful media your duty is only to encourage them professionally and criticize them for their improvement.
5) Its price is too high for its stuff.
6) Even though the paper quality, appearance are attractive they have no thoughtful and sensible write-ups about the movies and the film industry in general.
Some suggestions to make a monthly cini magazine an ideal one (My personal opinion).
The magazine should have following sections
1) Hot spot
2) New comers
3) Trend setters
4) Old is gold
5) Interviews
6) Preamble
7) Tips for dummies
8) Birthday baby
9) Top 10 movies of the month
10) Top 10 albums of the month
11) Top 10 songs of the month
12) Coming Up
13) Health Tonics
14) Readers contests and prizes
Portfolios of the film personalities are added wherever necessary.
Hot spots
This section should contain articles about the hottest topic in industry and hottest doesn’t mean that love between X hero and Y heroine or a new boy friend of heroine Y etc., it should be about the film industry. For example, ARR is scoring for “Lord of the rings”, Lagaan is nominated for Oscars, Deepa mehtha’s again with “Water”, Amirkhan in Rising Sun etc., and info’s of this kind should be dealt under this section.
New Comers
It should contain the reviews of the movies released last month and the movie should analyzed in detail and the pros and cons of the movie should be discussed.It should contain the reviews of the albums released last month and the music should be analyzed in detail without any compromise.
Trend Setters
Definitely there are many unforgettable movies and trend setting movies of bollywood. So those movies should be reviewed and the reasons for its success should be analyzed. “What stuff in the movie made it unforgettable and trend setting?” This section should give a detailed answer for this question.
Old is gold
This section should discuss on the old movies and reviews on old good movies and the biographies about old directors, actors, actresses, musicians, technicians etc., should be written. Through this we honor them for their contribution to Indian cinema.
Interviews
This section should contain interviews with talk of the town personalities about their new venture or anything related to their work. But again in the interview there should not be any question about their personal life. People are not fools to encourage such stuff still. Why should they bother some X marrying Y or the X loving Y in cinema it is none of our business but we have every rights to criticize their work on/off screen.
Preamble
It is the section under which previews are written for new movies or albums that are going to be released soon.
Tips for dummies
In this section some simple tips are given for direction /cinematography /editing /choreography and all the techniques behind the screen in making movies from experts in those fields. It need not be in detail and just enough to explore the difficulties in each field. And make the people aware of what is going on behind the screen so that they can appreciate the works of the people behind the screen also. For example, how a song is recorded, how a scene is split into shots, how a lighting pattern is chosen for a scene, how a song is choreographed, how double act shots are taken, how to write a story, how to write a screenplay, how important is make-up for a movie, how sets are built, how a scene is edited, how important is sound effects for a movie, how important is sound editing for a movie etc.,
Birthday baby
The information about the birthday dates of famous film personalities in forthcoming month and also small biographies about them and their career in film industry.
Top 10 movies of the month
This section should sort out top ten movies of the month based on box office result and also another list based on the critics opinion.
Top 10 albums of the month
This section should sort out top ten albums of the month based on their sales and also another list based on the critic’s opinion.
Top 10 songs of the month
This section should sort out ten best songs of the month
Coming up
This section is to make your readers to buy your next issue and should contain some topics that are going to be dealt in the next issue. The topics that you mention here should be attractive enough to force the reader to buy the next issue.
Health Tonics
This section should contain some selected feedback from the readers about your previous issue and it is a very important section for the improvement of the magazine sales.
Reader’s contests and prizes.
In this section the magazine can conduct some contests and attract the readers and give away the prizes for the winners. It should contain information about new contest and information about winners of the previous contest. The contest should not be silly like asking questions like what is the first movie of hero X, what is the color of costume of Y heroine in Z movie song, instead it should induce imagination and creativity in readers mind. Example: Write a better climax for movie ‘X’, write a different lyrics for the song ‘Y’for same situation, tests based on tips given on making movies etc.,
A MAGAZINE SHOULD BE AN INFOTAINER AND NOT A MERE ENTERTAINER