I built honest to goodness Foley surfaces for Roadrunner that they have used and are still using. The thing is the Foley artist is another factor. He has to be creative enough to know what sfx to put to a particular scene and where to put it. Roadrunner has 8 surfaces and they work well.
I have two other mixing stage designs in my table for implementations. These stages would have Foley surfaces in them as well - multi-purpose, Foley, ADR and mixing theater. It is just a matter of firming up the budgets.
The norm for sfx would be shotguns. It is the most flexible mic type for acquiring SFX. The same should be used for the Foley stage as it is the main mic used for the dialogue anyway, for easy matching. For ambience, a stereo mic or a stereo mic configuration on X-Y or whatever on a pole is the easiest to use and set up. I have done a previous one off sort of movie tele-novela with Raymund Red as Director (who understands sound very well. He would ask his DP to change the lighting positions if I could not capture a good dialogue) and Francis Magalona as main character, and used live dialogue all through-out. Did the Foley, the music and the mix using SMPTE time code (we have one of those) at TRACKS and it was quite okay. For the gunshots, as they were using blanks, I just captured that sound and used it in the final print. Just planted two mics and one shotgun near where they were doing the action, just enough to be away from the frame of the cameras. They sounded different from th usual full feature gunshots, but closer to the real thing as there was depth and enough loudness. The sound of the shells added realism. That was what the shotgun mic was taking.
For thunder, I would delay it a bit from the lightning frame. Not too much, but enough delay for realism purposes (sound travels slower than light, di ba?).
Sound design is a very interesting subject matter. Did some seminars on it as well as training. That was what I used to teach at St. Benilde before as well.
FWIW
