Thriller Character Research

Most thrillers have the formula of the good guy and the bad guy. However, in our thriller we keep an ambiguity as to which side the audience are supposed to be on. We show quite a lot of the thriller from the perspective of the criminals but we also bring the audience into the life of the police officers.

Marlin Brando as Don Corleone from The Godfather (1972)
He gives of the 'calm killer' feel we want Ted to give.

Having said this, the character in our thriller who is closest to being a protagonist is Ted who is the don of the gang. We are not going to give him a vast amount of dialogue because rather than being a loud-mouthed vulgar stereotypical representation of criminal leaders in films, we want him to be quieter and 'cooler' by making him more mysterious. We want to show him being aggressive to one of his employees though to still give him that 'silent but deadly' feel.

Theo and Ollie were initially going to be portrayed as the two bumbling idiots which appear in most films, thriller or not. However, our thriller is starting to gain a sense of deeper meaning so rather than conform to the 'Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee' comic duo cliche, we have decided to show realistic representations of people their age. Theo is much closer to Ted and helpful as we see him carry in boxes of merchandise while Ollie is more troublesome and does not admire Ted as much as Theo does. If Ted is to represent a sort of father figure to them in the business, Theo would be the cooperative son making him proud while Ollie would be more of a rebellious problem-child. We want to give the two young characters more emotional depth and dip in to their world a little more than most thrillers normally would.

This is how Theo and Ollie would have been represented had we stuck to them being
the comic relief element to the thriller.

Tony from Skins season 1 is similar to my idea of Theo's character because he is presented as
composed, in control of life and happy to carry out responsibilites (despite
his disrespect towards his parents)

Sid is could be similar to Ollie's character in that he is more insecure than Tony and is different
in his low self-esteem, low self discipline and typical teenage attitude towards jobs.