FILMTU
Project details
FILMTU combines a curated movie catalog with a weekly surprise screening, inviting film lovers to discover cinema beyond mainstream releases. Its website allows visitors to explore films, browse the screening schedule, book seats, and choose a membership plan
ROLE
TOOLS
OVERVIEW
This project explores how an independent cinema can promote a recurring surprise movie event on weekends through a more engaging digital experience. Rather than revealing the title in advance, the event invites audiences to embrace the unknown and experience cinema in a different way.
The design challenge was to make this recurring event a central part of the website experience, helping visitors discover it, understand how it works, and find the information they need to attend, without spoiling the surprise.
Problem
A cinema website needs to serve different visitor goals: browsing familiar films, planning a visit, and discovering something unexpected. A recurring mystery event adds a specific design challenge: visitors need enough information to decide whether to attend, but not so much that the surprise is spoiled.
Competitors
I reviewed Bio Skandia and Bio Rio to understand how independent cinemas present special screenings.
Bio Skandia provided a relevant reference for communicating a secret-film event through a dedicated page, clear practical details, and a direct booking action. Bio Rio demonstrated how special screenings can contribute to a broader cinema experience supported by curated programming and membership benefits.
These observations made me realize that I had to focus on three main things: make the weekly mystery screening highly visible, communicate essential event information without revealing the film, and create a clear path from discovery to booking.
Design decisions
INSIGHT: The event needs to compete for attention with regular film listings.
DESIGN RESPONSE: I created a section on the homepage at the beginning to give a more focus to the event, using a mysterious visual and shares useful decision-making details: genre, approximate runtime, age rating, screening window, and a short teaser. This preserves curiosity while helping visitors decide whether the event suits them.
In the schedule page, I created a differentiator for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with “Mystery” labels and highlighted the weekend screening as a distinct row. This extended event visibility beyond the homepage and makes the recurring format easier to recognize.
RATIONALE: A more focused visual treatment in this case, inverting the colors and a focus section on the home page, to help visitors recognise the event without confusing it with a standard film.
Final Design
REFLECTION
This project helped me explore how to balance two complementary needs: making the event easy to discover and preserving the curiosity that makes the experience special. By giving the screening a distinct visual identity and a clearer path to event information, I made sure that the website focused on the experience around the cinema's weekly surprise movie.
This project taught me the importance of designing not only for the information users need, but also for the anticipation and emotion that make an experience memorable.
