Elise Harris

Idiots

2016-07-15T21:57:00.003+01:00

The word idiots was originally used in Greece to mean 'private person' or 'unskilled person' as opposed to 'citizens' who took part in politics and public life and were the ones who ran the country and did all the democracy.

 ἰδιώτης were the poorer people  who were not considered informed or educated enough to take part in any of the decision making. The citizens though of the idiots as concerned only with their own day-to day-life and what was good for them, rather than the greater good.

Athenian democracy wasn't perfect. Only a very small proportion of the population got to vote and make decisions. You didn't get one if you were female, a slave or an idiot.

Idiots, the every day labourers and soldiers, were considered selfish and self-involved.

In Roman democracy more people got to vote - still not universal suffrage - but the equivalent of the Greek 'idiot' class could have a say. 

They were still widely scorned by the political class though. Bread and circuses (panem et circenses) were used to appease the populace. 

Free grain and lots of spectacle and policies designed to please the idiots.

Things like Jubilee processions, Olympic Games, Football, royal babies, celebrity pages in The Daily Mail.

Only the idiots want Brexit and circuses. 

Fee Fi Fo Fum

2014-12-04T15:21:00.005+00:00

I couldn't afford to go to drama school as my local authority did not have mandatory grants, wouldn't pay for tuition fees, and I don't have rich parents. So I did a drama degree in a college university (University of Leicester, but in Northampton, confusingly). This was when loans were just starting to be used and grants were on the way out. I still couldn't get a full grant in the first year because my dad's pay was just on the threshold.

Everyone I know took out as much loan money as they could. I relied on overdrafts, part time jobs and hope.

I struggled, but just about managed. The people who took out loans were massively in debt even by the end of the first year, and were ridiculously in debt by the end of the course.

It seems to have got progressively worse. Especially since tuition fees reached stupid amounts.

So much so that only people with very rich parents or who realistically think they are going to be bankers or have jobs paying over £100k a year should really bother now.

It seems to have turned into an aspiration tax, whereby anyone who goes to university and who is not likely to be rich is forced to either take a menial position that ensures they won't have to pay back the loan. They are effectively given the message they should know their place. Anyone only just making over the payback thresh hold will still be as in debt at the end of their working life, and will have still not paid back a fraction of the original debt.

People earning a pretty high salary of over £50k end up paying back a ton more than those who earn ridiculously high salaries.

The UK student loan system is a pile of cack is also helpful http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/business-news/politics/higher-student-fees-costing-government-billions/9248.article Not only are students suffering but the government have either seriously miscalculated or else this was their plan all along. A return to feudalism (if we ever left it). Hurrah.

Added to this the government screwed up by paying loans to fraudulent students http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30277346

And the really good news is you can take out even more for a graduate loan now. Whoopy,

Nick Clegg says raising tuition fees has not deterred the poor from from going to university That's because the poor haven't yet reached the point where they realise they are even poorer after getting into a lifetime of debt that they can never repay. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/19/nick-clegg-raising-tuition-fees-not-deterred-poor

This American article is obviously dealing with US realities, but is still depressing for people who did theatre and drama degrees. http://fortune.com/2014/12/04/student-loans-college-majors/

I have never earned enough that I would have had to pay back any loan I took out. That's not a good thing.

Free for All

2014-12-03T14:25:00.003+00:00

Someone posted in a group I am in that they left another film making Facebook group because there were a lot of "jobs" being advertised "for the experience". They were told they should be doing it for the art and money was just a concept.

I think this goes to show that student film makers need to be educated into realising when they budget for a film they need to budget for payment to those taking part.

By letting new film makers get away with believing everyone is going to do it "for the art" it causes a lot of problems long-term for everyone. After all, at some point, presumably, they will themselves feel they want to get paid for their skills and if everyone is doing it for free on even bigger projects there will be an outcry.

I think we are already that that stage, largely due to the "let's all do it for the good of the project" mentality that really only ends up being for the good of the producers of the project.

I think everyone has done work for "free" at some point but unless it's as a special favour to a friend you should be getting something of value out of it, if not money itself. Reciprocity is important! Though there is only so much showreel footage anyone needs and only so many promises of credits. They need to come up with more than that to get away with expecting things of people.

Also, as everyone who counts as a worker is now entitled to at least national minimum wage and holiday/sick pay, they are shaky legal ground if they don't offer it. Especially if they expect to sell it on.

A year or two ago I did a job for a film school (based in a well known film studio) where I was told I would be paid, and for which the school definitely have a set day rate. The students decided not to pass any of the payment details on to the accounting department so all the people promised payment had to contact the college directly and sort it out. I am worried a lot of the students are trying to work some sort of scam or (to be kinder to them) are incompetent or just careless.

Another film school student promised footage but then never sent it and actively blocked the actors in her project from applying to other projects in the school, because she didn't want the competition.

A lot of lecturers in the past have passed on Spotlight log in details to students, on the understanding the students will pay actors, and then students post unpaid roles.
Spotlight has cracked down as it flouts their terms, but I think these students have just moved to CCP and other sites with less regulation.

And the "perks" tend to be dodgy anyway. I did one film school production where they forgot to get me food and provided me with some crisps as an alternative, and they booked me into a room with my co-actor, who was luckily very nice but who I had never met before, and who was a man. There was a toilet/shower in the corner of the room, which we also had to share and which didn't have a proper door.

Film students need a better grounding into what is acceptable, all round.

Though I have also ended up working for very little on projects for grown ups who should know better than to exploit the people working for them.

there is very little money to be made for anyone in short films, but this has started to happen more and more in features.

Which is why people starting out need to get their heads around proper budgeting. Apart from anything if they haven't got professional working conditions they are probably not insured wither. And it is for their own good to do things properly - I only just discovered the BBC and ITV won't even show a programme or film if it hasn't got the PACT or BBC pay agreements or the equivalent - so it severely limits where the thing will end up.

Indie festivals for crappy low budget productions are all very well but the chances of getting further, or getting proper distribution, are low.

If it looks low budget and shoddy then it probably is. If it looks professional and you haven't paid anyone, then this in, many ways, is worse. Especially if there was money spent on things that were not people working on the film.

This is not just the actors - crew are often required to do it "for the art", "experience" or "love of the thing". It's balls.

Profit share and profit percentage work are great if you have a tiny part in a big budget movie (see Marlon Brando in Superman) but are next to useless in a film that will never be seen.

Cast Off

2013-09-15T14:37:00.000+01:00

Seen too many casting notices lately that say in essence "We only want someone of this specific colour, age, socio-economic group and with these precise affiliations for this role".

Every job seems to be designed for one person who can fulfil all these meaningless and arbitrary things and whether or not the person is an effective actor seems by-the-by.

There are a lot of non-acting jobs that have the same tenor to them in the last few years though these look as though they are actually designed not to find the right person for the job because they are really intent on getting someone who is already with them a job. Possibly that's the case with some of these acting jobs as well, but in the main it looks like the casting agents have lost all ability to be imaginative and are too lazy to see more than about three people for anything. Maybe it's the fault of reality TV and fake documentaries that are really non-actor soap operas. In those they cast specific types and specific people who are 'really' like that or can be easily manipulated into being like that.

In both cases this seems to flout guidelines, or at least come very close to the edge, and it's looking more and more ridiculous.

In the case of acting, I would rather see people who aren't necessarily just being themselves all the time. It helps if the actor can find something within themselves to bring to the character, this is true - but casting only people who are 'actually' the person they are portraying* can't really be a good thing. It's a bit limiting for the actor and even more limiting for the production.

(*Recent examples include one that asked only for women in their 30s who had Barclaycard plus accounts and one for a woman who ,according to the notice, had to be 34 years of age, white and working class - and it looked as though anyone who wasn't all these things exactly, in real life, wouldn't even be seen.)

Recipes without gluten

2011-12-14T18:30:00.002+00:00

I have made quite a few recipe videos over the years, all of them gluten free and most of them vegetarian or vegan. Some of them dairy-free. Anyway, here they are all in one place.

Ambiguous Vegetable

2011-02-12T12:43:00.001+00:00

Great Expectations

2010-04-11T18:59:00.003+01:00

My mother just told me that her next door neighbour asked her "what exactly is Elise aiming for?"

My mother told her she didn't know, so she asked me "what is it, fame, fortune, celebrity, what?"

Well the truth is anyone who expects any of these things is an idiot. That's not to say you can't aim at them, but you have to do it because you are doing the things in your life that fulfil you, not because they are the goal.

What I want is to do the things I want and need to do, do the things that make me happy, while at the same time making enough money out of them not to starve and be found dead in a ditch.

This has always been my aim.

I would love to be well known and rich because of the things I do - but it may never happen. Probably won't happen. Be lovely if it did, but dreams very rarely come true.

All you can ever do is do what you do.

My mother seemed satisfied with that but said it was unlikely I would die in a ditch. I don't think anyone can know how they will end up.

I am not a pessimist nor an optimist and probably nowhere near being a realist - but I am a pragmatist.

OK, Computer

2009-11-02T22:06:00.002+00:00

Tried to get my computer to understand my voice.

Charlatans

2009-10-12T09:59:00.000+01:00

I read the other day about several fatalities at a badly run, misguided sweat lodge, run by a self-help guru.

Of course, me being me, I was obliged to go to the man's website and sign up under a fictitious name to get all the free programmes he was offering and to see what on earth he was trying to do.

Make more money, as it turns out - that and nothing else.

I fell asleep listening to the audio version he has online so possibly I have been hypnotised into giving him what little money I have in return to the secret to getting more and being happy about giving him all of it.

I also have a $100 voucher to go to one of his sweat lodges. Anyone want it?

Words

2008-11-03T09:12:00.000+00:00

I am up to 56,850 words of the novel now - and it has only taken me three years. For about 22 months of that time it has been languishing unread, even by me, in an online briefcase. I even forgot where I had put the last version I wrote until yesterday.

Anyway, now I will get back to writing it and hopefully, soon, I will have a manuscript that I can send out. I know it's more usual these days to pitch the idea and then write the novel, but this is one of six that I have started and got to various stages at (the shortest word count is 18,000 and the longest one is around 58,000 according to the electronic word count. None of them are properly finished although three of them have endings.)

I really need to get myself together with it.

Three of them are, I suppose, novelettes, being well under the 80,000 or so words accepted by the publishing industry these days as a minimum.

I even sent a few out a while ago, and got to the stage where I was talking to editors and agents about them - but it all fell through and I lost heart.

Now though I need to feel I have achieved something.

The vegetable book has also gone awry - I got as far as writing a first, short, draft and some illustrations but I am terrible at following up on things.

And the children's picture book idea has also gone wrong. The trouble is I have too many thinbgs that are only just started or nearly finished and so I am not at all sure wher my focus should lie.

If anyone has any tips on sorting myself out that would be great.

I still have several plays and screenplays in draws and on ancient floppy discs as well. And lots of poems that never got published. I did get a few in little magazines and journals, but it takes so long as most of them are quarterlies and you can wait over a year after acceptance until publication.

I need more validation, is what it probably is (that and some money).