It gets me thinking that I need to consider what type of foley we might record, during production. For me, in the past, foley has always been something strictly done in post. Your comments make me realize that foley needs to be considered in advance, and how it will impact the audience's experience.
Now you're getting it! Although I will say that generally Foley should be recorded in post rather than during production, although obviously the visual side of the Foley equation needs to be considered during pre-production and actually filmed.
And no, I didn't want the audience looking at the other person, when the line "it's metastasized" is delivered. Now that you mention it, I can see(hear) how the way we shot it drove the audience's attention to the wrong person.
Exactly. From the Foley perspective, one way you could have shot this part of you short would be to: Have the actor delivering the "it's metastasised" line do something more definite with his spoon and pot just before the line and the other actor do something less definite with his. The Foley will then draw the audience's eye to the actor you want, when you want. Almost immediately after he's delivered the line, his friend could say drop his spoon into his pot, in surprise, which provides a Foley opportunity to move the audience's visual attention to his friend's reaction.
Going back to the third fundamental of Foley use (tonal subtleties), when the friend subdues his shocked response, the Foley (spoon and pot) sounds aggressive rather than intense, which I don't believe was your intent. Agreed that this is a subtle detail but you're well beyond the newb stage and what separates the particularly good filmmakers from the rest is almost entirely in these types of subtle detail. Are you really doing all you can to communicate as precisely/effectively as you can, or are you just going through the basic motions and inadvertently implying something other than your intent? Are you actively aiding your storytelling or are you fighting/contradicting it? These small, subtle contradictions of intent are a hallmark of nano budget films and even quite common in low budget indies. The cumulative effect is to pull the audience out of the scenes or at least require them to work harder to feel involved in your story, which is pretty much the opposite response a gifted storyteller is after and certainly one of the main reasons why a high percentage of audiences avoid low budget indies!
Although I've used Foley as an example, we could make similar observations about the other sound FX. Having the cartoon playing in the background was an inspired idea, most newbs wouldn't have thought of that and wouldn't have had anything in the background (aurally). Furthermore, you've gone a whole step further, you've thought about it in pre (or at least in production) rather than just in post and supported the idea visually, with a cut to the cartoon on the TV. This "sells" the idea far more slickly, effectively and professionally than just whacking some cartoon sound on in post with no visual support. OK, so we're well past the newb stage here but there's another step beyond the one you've taken and it's a big step, because it can help take your filmmaking to another level again; having gone to the trouble of creating a great sound design opportunity, have you really taken full advantage of it? It's a great sound design opportunity because after the brief glimpse of the cartoon, there's no more visual reference to the cartoon and therefore nothing our background cartoon sound has to comply with. In other words, after the visual reference we're free to use whatever cartoon sound we want! We could, for example, have the closing cartoon credit music/ident immediately after the visual reference, ending before the "it's metastasised" line, leaving that line to be delivered in relative silence and maybe having opening cartoon credit music start when the friend subdues his shocked response. The contrast of cartoon sound throughout the scene and no cartoon sound on the line and immediate response would create a very powerful effect. It would concentrate the audience's attention, create shape and very significantly enhance the dramatic impact of what is the dramatic highlight/whole point of the short. I'm just using cartoon music/ident as an example of course, you could just as easily create the same or similar effect by continuing the cartoon sound and creating a contrast just changing the pace of it, say having chase or action cartoon sound most of the time and quiet subdued cartoon sound over our line/immediate response. This same principle could be used with all sorts of background sound, say traffic or a nearby construction site we've briefly visually established say through the window at some stage. All background sound has ebbs and flows and after the visual reference we can use and place those ebbs and flows whenever we want, to aid the dramatic highlights in our scene or it's tension, suspense and resolution.
Many newbs will film a scene with little or no movement, in a closed room with double glazing, in a quiet/near silent suburb and simply eliminate any opportunity to employ one of the most powerful filmmaking/storytelling tools which exists!! Nano budget filmmakers love to quote films like 12 Angry Men but just being able to quote it is completely meaningless, knowing how and why it works as well as it does and being able to apply those principles to one's own filmmaking is what it's all about, otherwise you're just going to make an un-watchable film about a bunch of ordinary people in a ordinary room! Try watching it again, study the Foley and how it manipulates where and at whom your attention is drawn, listen to it's timbre, note the use of the fan and listen carefully to the rain, when it starts, it's ebbs and flows and tonal variations and how it aids the pace and tension. It's not just the luck of the rain sound effect they happened to record/find, it was specifically designed that way!
G