As a peer of the realm who can doubtlessly also pass himself off as a wealthy crisp magnate, Lord Smith is clearly not a man who needs my approval. This is especially the case now his report into the future strategy of the British film industry, which came out yesterday, has garnered such a positive response. Almost a surprise after last week’s outcry when our Prime Minister heralded the report’s arrival with all the tact of a man installing a swear box in a tourettes clinic. Far be it from me to suggest that Mr.Cameron’s comments and those made by Smith Report contributor Lord Fellowes of Downton, were designed to have exactly this impact, but they certainly sold us the dummy and made sure that the report was welcomed with opened arms and sighs of relief from an industry led to expect something short-sighted and barking.

Whatever Fellowes’ may have hoped to achieve by proclaiming that public money needed to be spent on “more mainstream” projects, the report that he contributed to is decidedly closer in outlook to Ken Loache’s response that what we need is diversity or as the report has it “the broadest and richest range of British films”. So whilst Fellowes may well be Lord Golden of Globe, he clearly didn’t get much of a say in the final text of the report. Which is probably why its conclusions are not a bag of contrived gibberish couched in bizarrely melodramatic tones and lacking in any form of realism or historical accuracy.

The Smith Report is certainly not escapist Sunday evening fiction. There are no misty eyed plans to create a rain sodden British Hollywood, a Brolly-Wood set out to solve all our problems with the glamourous hammer of production. Rather, the main thrust of the document is clear from the title – “A Future For British Film: It begins with the audience.” The stance is clear, we tried “Built It And They Will Come” but they didn’t come because they couldn’t get there, so rather than the field of dreams let’s think about widening the road that leads up to it and perhaps maybe a bypass.

As a result we have a report which is unshowy, quietly pragmatic and broadly in line with the thoughts of everyone I’ve ever spoken both inside and outside the industry. For the most part it is dry and managerial which is no bad thing for a government report. It would, if implemented in full, be a massive boon to everyone making films in this country, and to everyone who loves cinema.

So there we go, Lord Smith gets my approval whether he wants it or not. There are things missing but at least what’s there is sensible, practical and would broadly achieve what it sets out to. The biggest omission from the text was any recommendation for the tax system. This is strange since the report does stress how essential the current tax break is in securing funding. Indeed here’s the report’s own chart which lists the tax credit as the third highest source of funding for British Film (in 2009).

It is great that finally voices that carry authority are calling for the action needed to grow the UK audience and strengthen the reach to our domestic market. I agree that if it is possible to shake the general public from their narrow convictions about what British film is then we will effectively be cleaning the green house windows and letting in the sunlight. But what of the seeds currently in the soil?

Once this process of audience building has taken hold the financing of film will get smoother as it becomes easier to demonstrate how a film would make a mid-term rather than long term profit. As an aside I also admire the report’s calls for stronger links between producers and distributors, an attempt to end the war of attrition which sees both sides finding ways to guard their income stream rather than necessarily maximising the film’s. Similarly I applaud the suggested changes that would enable producers to keep more of the revenue brought by a successful film and the gentle pushing back of the BFI’s need to reclaim it’s Lottery Fund. This would mark an easing of the need for the Lottery distributor to act both as an instrument of state intervention and as a hard nosed market beast – a schizophrenia which the UKFC struggled to cope with for many years.

However there’s still an obvious dip in this positive cycle where audiences are enticed towards British films yet producers are left with little hard evidence to calm their investor’s nerves. Unless this happened to coincide with a general economic uplift then we run the risk of ruining all the hard work done. Improving the tax credit available, even as an explicitly short term measure, would have been a good step to avoid this.

Herein lies my second doubt about the document. There is a lot of talk of film clubs and communities sharing our amazing cinematic heritage. A prospective “British Film Week” is sketched out with that whiff of bunting and street parties that all politicians love to invoke. There is nothing wrong with these proposals and everything right about trumpeting the brilliant films already exist, films that certainly inspired me to enter the industry. However it is very easy to create a “A Future For British Film” which hinges around the cakey nostalgia of old films. It is too easy to do this. If a mission to “connect the widest possible range of audiences throughout the UK with the broadest and richest range of British films” and the “developing and launching [of] a British film ‘brand’” turns into little more than an annual screening of both Kes and The Lady Killers, then we will simultaneously delight our audience, who always enjoy what they already know they like, and cripple our future.

This is not a stick with which to beat Lord Smith or his well tempered report. However the real caveat I have about Monday’s celebrations is that this is only a report. The good sense contained within it has no legislative weight. Indeed a lot of the time it seems to actively wish not to, usually preferring to “call upon” or “urge” the key participants and only really putting on the tough talk when it comes to piracy. Ed Vaizey our Culture Minister says he looks “forward to examining what the report recommends…” which is a timely if gentle reminder that this is 111 pages of advice. In one crucial sense the “Future Of British Film” doesn’t begin with the audience… it begins with Ed.