Most serious film books during the last twenty years have focused on theoretical issues, film history, or film analyses, leaving production to the side. This text, however, designed for beginning film production courses, fills that void, opening the production process to pertinent, argumentative notions and incorporating material from Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Lyotard, and Derrida, among others. Although Geuens covers screenwriting, lighting, staging, and framing, among other production issues, he avoids the strictly vocational or "professional" approach to film teaching currently applied to most production courses.

Geuens reevaluates what cinema could be, to revive its full powers and attend to the mystery of the creative process. To counter Hollywood's normative machinery, he suggests taking back from the professionals important notions they have arrogated for themselves but rarely act upon: artistry, passion, and engagement.