aalenfae said:

The problem with larger cuts (and mine are already pretty large for this scene!) is that the scenes are already edited pretty tightly. Cutting larger amounts of material (apart from a few lines and stuff) tends to have the effect of making scenes feel unnaturally short, which is sometimes just as bad as the stupid stuff that was cut.

There has to be a very fine balance between content and natural flow. If stuff feels cut out, it'll feel like an edit. And I want to avoid the "edited" feeling as much as possible.

This attitude is one of the reasons I've got confidence that your edit will be good.