Post-Production: redundant shots

Many of our shots are quite redundant, facing us with another issue, figuring out which shot is more valuable than the other. My editor and I are together, sharing ideas and working through the entire clip, basically reconstructing our previous draft. We found out that removing some shots actual made the scene more meaningful and easier to understand. 

For instance, we had a shot where it was a close up on player 2 and her facial expressions portrays confidence. 

the close up shot in question

At first I thought that this was a very important shot for the "playing chess" scene because it tells the audience that she has came up with a good plan to potentially help her win against her opponent. However, after much consideration we realized that without the shot, the scene actually went smoother rather than feeling cluttered. To ensure that the point is still being put across we asked a classmate what their first thought of the section was. We received feedback with them saying that it seems like player 2 thought she would win but in the end she did not. It is important that we are still providing the same message even when cutting certain shots out.