×
Getting a slow-burn film talked about, with nothing in the way of joining in
- Next.js
- GSAP
- Postgres
- Railway
- Cloudinary
- UploadThing
- Vercel
- Role
- Solo, end to end
- Design, frontend, backend, admin
- Product
- Fan site + admin panel
- For the Telugu film Rao Bahadur
- Stage
- 0 → 1, shipped
- Live in 5–6 days, for the July 2026 release
- Fans
- 271 theories
- And 144 comments and replies
- Reach
- 4 official posts
- 36,000+ views on X, the director replying
- Takeaway
- Remove every hurdle
- A nickname was enough to join in
The brief
Rao Bahadur is a Telugu film directed by Venkatesh Maha. Its makers asked Spotmies for a site where people who'd watched it could share their opinions and dig into the hidden details the director had put in. It's a slow, detailed film, and it opened in the same week as a much bigger star's, so it needed word of mouth. The film's team hired MutinyX, which brought in Spotmies, and Spotmies gave the project to me. I designed and built all of it.
The first draft took two to three days and covered about 90% of the site. The client's changes, like the admin panel, took it to five or six.
Every choice below had to fit these:
- Live in under a week, in time for the July 2026 release
- The same week as a bigger star's film, so it had to spread by word of mouth
- No messy sign-up or login pagesOn a fan site, people who meet one leave
- My first time building something with this much content at this scale
The film's team hired MutinyX, which brought in Spotmies; I worked with Spotmies only.
- MineThe design, the frontend, the backend and the admin panel, and every asset, from the posters and stills I found to the graphics I made
- Mine tooThe spoiler question, the easter egg, and how to join in without signing up
- The client'sThe user flow, what the site had to include, and the rule against sign-up pages
The decisions
The client's one firm rule was no messy sign-up or login pages: fans of a smaller film won't make an account just to leave a comment, and most who meet a sign-up page leave. How to do without one was my call. Reading is open to everyone, and only your first like, reply or post asks for a nickname. As you type it, a face is drawn from the letters with FaceHash, so everyone has an avatar without uploading a photo.
The trade-off: without accounts, anyone can post as anyone. So the film team watched the theories from the admin panel and could remove any that crossed a line.
This was my idea. Rooting for the film starts with one question: have you watched it? If not, you go to the buzz page, with trailers, critics' posts and where to book tickets, and nothing that gives the film away. If you have, you pick your favourite characters and go on to the theories.
The site is about the details the director hid in the film, so I hid one in the site. Search the theories for “the insect”, in English or in Telugu, and confetti falls while a card explains what the insect stands for in the film.
The look
The look comes from the film's main posters: gold on near-black, with a peacock green. Gold is for buttons and anything you can act on, with a gold gradient on the big headings; peacock green marks small labels. Headings and buttons are set in Cinzel, and everything you read in Inter.
Colour
Type
Cinzel, for headings and buttons
Inter, for everything else
Cinzel in capitals for the big moments; Inter for reading theories
Shape
Fully round buttons and tags; cards keep a small 8px corner
The build
Around those decisions is the rest of the product: the theories themselves, a debate the film team ran, and an admin panel they used without needing me.
It runs on Next.js, with a Postgres database on Railway and the images and videos in Cloudinary and UploadThing. I was still new to building at this scale. The hardest part was keeping pages quick while theories, replies, videos and images piled up, and making likes and counts update live without a refresh. I also reworked the animations several times, until each one explained something instead of getting in the way.
What happened
Fans filled the site with theories and replies. The film's official X account sent people to the site four times in its first ten days, asked for easter eggs and theories, and said the director would reply to the best ones. Spotmies was told on a call that the filmmakers loved the site.
It also carried on past the cinema run. The debate opened after the film left cinemas, and once it closed, the site turned to pointing fans to the film on Netflix.
- theories posted
- 271
- comments and replies
- 144
- official posts about it
- 4
- views on those posts
- 36,000+
The site was built in a hurry, in under a week, and it still gave the client everything they asked for. The film got good reviews but didn't do well at the box office, partly because it came out alongside a bigger film. The site kept the people who had watched it talking, and gave the film team something to post about, but it couldn't bring in the people who never went to see it.
- What I learnedIn a week, decide early what has to be right. Here it was joining in without an account, and everything else could follow
- What I'd changePlan for speed from the start, setting up how images load and counts update before the content piled up, not after
- What I'd do nextA spoiler-free way into the theories, to draw in people who haven't watched it yet