I wasn't around at the time, but I suspect Channel 4 rather stumbled into film-making. Jeremy Isaacs and David Rose, my predecessor, had always intended for the channel to make films, but films for television. The idea that they might also make films for release in cinemas was not so much a plan, but something that happened from time to time, then more regularly - until eventually, after some years, it took over and became the orthodoxy. Channel 4 was the television channel, for long periods the only channel, that financed feature films.
Somehow I cannot help feeling that this piecemeal creation of a strand was entirely appropriate, in that it created conditions in which British film-makers were able to flourish. Not to say they only made good films. Most films fail. That is the law of the film industry, everywhere. The trick is to make enough of them so that a few are OK and a tiny minority are really good and can pay for the rest.
Of course, the climate of the film and television industries in the early 1990s was vastly different from today. When I started at Channel 4, no one suggested to me that I had to commission films to make a profit. There is no manual for commissioning editors, and so when I started I asked my director of programmes, Liz Forgan, for advice. She was - as those who know her would expect - very forthright. "Follow your passions. Never commission anything you don't believe in. That's the only sin. Commission work you believe is potentially good and interesting." Not a word, you will note, about profits. I understood, of course, that like everything else shown on the channel, this strand had somehow to prove its worth or it wouldn't survive.
And when the successes did come, they were entirely unpredicted. Films are not a commodity like a computer or a car. On the whole, audiences do not know what they want. Probably they want to be surprised. So we relied on "capricious audience tastes", as the Guardian's correspondent described it on Wednesday, to discover the films. Each success, if you like, was a fluke, but we were playing for flukes, offering a diet of independent, idiosyncratic films, most of which disappeared but some of which took off. There was no pretence that we understood the "market", could somehow tailor films to satisfy the appetite of what future audiences might want.
Today executives are under huge pressure to deliver "profitable" films. Sir Alan Parker made it quite clear when he took over as supremo of the Film Council that he wanted the Lottery funds to support film-makers prepared to make popular commercial films. Of course, scripts and the talent to translate them on to the screen are still important - but the emphasis has shifted. Executives now have to have a concept of what makes a commercial film. And yet, as has been said before, no one knows.
My brief was so different. I sought out talented people, sometimes correctly, sometimes not, and supported their energies and initiatives. I didn't start with a preconception of what film they should be making. With Trainspotting, a film that was thought commercially doomed from the moment I put it into development, it was forcibly pointed out that no film about drugs had ever made money. Worse, the movie had no stars. A distributor, however, was keen to co-finance the film - on condition that the film-makers agreed to remove the scene in the toilet. Of course, with hindsight we can see the distributor was wrong to want to remove one of the iconic scenes of 1990s British cinema. But without hindsight, you might have agreed with them.
The decision to commission a film is one that does not easily lend itself to logic or analysis; it depends hugely on the instincts of the person who takes responsibility for it. That instinct can easily be warped and undermined by the well-meaning concerns of others. There are always more reasons not to make a film than to make it. The people offering words of caution are usually right because, as we know, most films fail. Then again, they will also miss the good ones.
Also crucial is the influence of marketing on the planning of a film. Clearly it's hugely important, but once the marketing decisions become dominant, that usually distorts the film. Issues of casting are themselves marketing decisions. So you bring in an American star to appeal to the US market and, if you are not careful, your film is undermined before a frame is shot. Audiences are smart. They know when they are being manipulated.
The concept of a mini-studio for Channel 4 - in which the arms of developing projects, commissioning and financing the films, selling them and distributing them in the UK were all brought under one roof and one guiding hand - was one I helped to develop and championed. It was logical. It made sense economically. It was a natural progression for the channel.
But as so often, what is logical isn't necessarily the answer. I would argue that the return of FilmFour into the fold of Channel 4 isn't necessarily the disaster that it is portrayed as being. It is ghastly for those who tried so hard to make the model work and who have now lost their jobs. But for film-makers, it may offer an environment where once again films that have no obvious commercial potential, such as a story about a transsexual love affair crossed with the IRA, can be commissioned and surprise us all. It's what one might describe as the zen approach; if you aim too hard, you will miss. So don't aim so hard at making profitable films. If enough of them are any good, then a few will be successful, and maybe even commercially successful.
It's only the BBC and Channel 4 that can afford to adopt this approach. That makes them unique. Interestingly, if you consider what have been the British-financed successes of the past few years - Iris, Gosford Park, East Is East - these are all idiosyncratic movies that owe nothing to the rules of a Hollywood blockbuster. And more power to them.
· David Aukin was head of film at Channel 4 from 1990 to 1998.
