When I saw the much-vaunted trailer for Fifty Shades Of Grey, I assumed the film was about to open. But no! The release date is 2015! Turns out it's one of those films so big, so hot, so throbbing*, that the mere trailer is released as an entity in itself.

(*That's "throbbing" in the sense of public anticipation, you understand. I wouldn't want you to think Ian Botham's hacker had got hold of my laptop.)

If the movie is not coming out for at least six months, that leaves plenty of time for tweaking. (That's "tweaking" in the sense of naked actors groping each other's nipples on camera. I wouldn't want you to think I was talking about the edit suite.)

Therefore, the time feels right for me to issue some advice to its director, the peerless Sam Taylor-Wood. I am speaking as one pornographer to another.

My own porn days are long behind me. It was in 2001 that I struck out for Amsterdam with nothing but my best friend Charlie, two cheap home movie cameras (one of them without a working microphone) and a budget of £15,000 with which to make the greatest blue movie of all time.

The money had been fronted to us by a respectable publishing house, as part of an advance payment for which it received a book about our X-rated adventures called Once More, With Feeling.

If you can get your hands on a copy of the book and have a strong stomach, I can rather recommend it. It's funny.

The film is no longer available, unless you come to my house with an old VCR player and several bottles of whisky. That is probably a good thing for all concerned. The film is also funny: an excellent quality in a book, but not ideal for visual erotica.

There were many reasons why we embarked on this adventure, which the book explains in far too much detail for me to reproduce here, but I can tell you our artistic aims: 1) to make the greatest blue movie of all time and 2) to make the happiest blue movie of all time, in which everyone involved would enjoy themselves, feel respected and have no regrets other than to be sorry when it was over.

I would say that we were successful in our second aim. As for the first, history will be our judge. Or, rather, it won't, because I just nipped upstairs and burned the last existing copy lest anyone happened to ring my doorbell with an old VCR player and several bottles of whisky.

I've never met Sam Taylor-Wood, but I bet she has the same goals as we did: to create something brilliant, erotic and happy. Assuming that's the case, I hope she will benefit from the following experienced advice.

• When it strikes you that a great way to ensure your actors feel comfortable together is to cast existing long-term couples, bear in mind there is a downside. Your fabulous and ground-breaking "two gay men get it on in a mainstream porn film" scene, for example, may be compromised if the two performers simply bicker all day and roll their eyes at each other's attempts to be sexy.

• If your camera does not have a working microphone, remember that the other camera does. You do not want to return to the UK, watch the rushes and discover that the hot tension of the "dungeon orgy" scene is punctured by the sound of you opening a can of Diet Coke behind the lens.

• When browsing the charity shops of Peckham for costume and props, get a range of sizes. The passionate intensity of your "That priest should really be struck off!" scene might be weakened if the priest's dog collar hangs down like a necklace while his cassock only reaches his elbows.

• If nobody in your cast speaks English as a first language, do not make the dialogue too complicated. I can tell you, for example, that the line: "I ejaculated into my brother Hong-Lau's macchiato and told him it was a new brand of creamer" will require 37 takes. Even then, the only comprehensible word in the finished film will be "creamer".

• If you wish to include a vigorous spanking scene, this will not work unless you have either sociopathic tendencies or access to professional sound effects. The off-camera noise of an eager Dutch volunteer slapping a space hopper with a ping-pong bat is not as effective as you'd think.

• After your tax return has listed "condoms, lube, handcuffs" as deductible expenses, bear in mind that you may be asked to change accountant.

• When a cheery Netherlander comes round to fix your laptop, spots the porn script and offers his friend's houseboat as a location as long as he himself can take the role of the amorous plumber, make sure that the "dynamic sex wizard" who plays your romantic lead does not suffer from motion sickness.

• If you envisage your opening scene to be a pastoral idyll in which a beautiful pair of naked twins skip merrily through flowers and foliage, do not film it in Amsterdam in November.

• If you decide to sell your film via an exclusive website that you've set up specially, do not forget to renew the domain name. Or do. Sometimes, the unavailability of your masterpiece is the greatest gift you can give the world.