inserts versus codas

JC has this dislike of inserts and I feel the same. By inserts I think of shots that are there purely for information, as in the actor is looking at their phone. Insert: CU of their phone and we see who is calling. Sometimes you have no choice but when you can...so I managed to get rid of just such an insert.
It was the park scene we shot the previous weekend. Here we see that Claire has made contact with Nick, and enough has transpired between them that we see they are comfortable, even intimate together. The setting, and the weather on this particular shooting day, amplify what Claire has achieved in making this leap to become someone else but starting a relationship with Nick.
But still it is a lie, and it is Sophie's presence, in the form of a series of phone calls to Claire's mobile that gives it away.
After we have established Claire and Nick's relationship and setting I have Claire sneaking away from Nick to check her phone messages.
Then the dastardly insert of Claire's mobile phone: Missed calls: Sophie (7)
But I realised that what was important in this scene was that Claire had broken away from Nick and in effect the whole construct to check her phone. It was the fact of the lie that was important, not the content of the lie.
And in the next scene we find out who it was who called and the substance of her calls.
The insert is unnecessary.
Now what I don't mean by inserts are those abstraction you see in an Ozu film or Kieslowski and so many others. I have read these referred to sometimes as codas which made little sense to me at first. I thought of that word in reference to music, the concluding part of the whole piece of music. But coda can refer to something brings to an end the preceding part, not just a whole. If you thought of Ozu and his static shots in The End of Summer you can see how they end and summarise the preceding scene or scenes.
In a coda there may information but there is something more. Kieslowski creates abstractions as a layer of the story's language. I think of Blue and the scene where Juliette Binoche is having coffee and we cut to a close-up of the sugar cube, held just at the surface of the coffee, absorbing the liquid. What does this mean? It is hardly necessary for information. Do we need to know that the character takes one sugar cube with her coffee? Kieslowski talks about this himself in the DVD extras. He wanted to show how the character was looking inward, in her own world. The lighting, which was high-contrast, and the focus, which was shallow, added to this effect.
And so far this is one of the weaknesses of the Claire part of this project - and I am certain that I have said this in previous posts. I have not developed my codas, or the layer of abstractions sufficiently. So, I need to get on to it.
Next weekend I am planning to work with David to develop just this.