I'm merely an amateur, but find that videos of workflow-based lessons are highly effective in showing what may be applicable to a specific artistic concept I'm trying to express via the given toolset.  That is, while a manual can provide details on specific settings, the practical demonstration of how one starts and flows towards desired results can easily be augmented by any creative thinker to their own context, I feel.

The essential needs of lighting, scene composition, materials, rendering, etc. sound great for this effort - although I would love to see more morphing demonstrations, what you are describing sounds highly valuable as a base to start anyone in a solid manner before they progress to the next step of highly customizing their models, props, etc.  So many of us have struggled with the basics of, let's say, lighting options while juggling with more expressive, directly artistic options and concepts, which I think has made the process of learning to use the larger set of tools for enabling more advanced expression far more frustrating than it should likely have been, IMHO.

Even if you don't desire to cover morphing and such in this series, covering how objects can be moved towards desired expressions and made to interact in ways that appear "convincing" (i.e., surfaces appear to actually touch, grasp, envelop and perhaps "give" - maybe through the most basic of morphs) would be very useful to see for artists in the audience.  Perhaps this was at least partially in your mind when offering "physics" as one subtopic.

Depending on the length and depth of the content/examples of workflow demonstrated, I would easily pay a usual rate (as seen on renderosity or similar marketplaces) for this style of tutorial.