Murch calls attention to the essential place of improvisation and intuition in filmmaking practice, invoking examples from the Tamil filmmaking scenes in the book as well as his own experience as a filmmaker and editor. Calling on the work of Jean Cocteau, Francis Ford Coppola in the making and release of The Godfather, and his own editing of Apocalypse Now, Murch argues that the practical, spiritual, and emotional orientations expressed by Tamil filmmakers in the book speak to the common concerns of what he calls the global “film tribe.”