Here's been my experience with
McCandless.
I have found very few situations where
McCandless did not produce a better result than using other approaches. That's not to say that I haven't had to modify the approach in order to accomodate particular requirements for a particular show. After having lit over 70 shows, I approach a show in this way.
I
lay out a
McCandless plot, with each acting area defined and assigned a warm and cool front light (R01, R63). Depending on my lighting inventory I may assign a single back light (warm), or two back lights to each acting area.
This gives me a fairly
broad pallette to apply mood to the front lighting of each acting area.
I then begin lighting the set via downlighting and washes. I try to ensure that I've got enough downwash to adequately light the
stage, then my
McCandless plot can be held to low levels to get the actors to punch out from the set and
wash lighting. When choosing
wash and downlighting, I begin to examine things like environment and mood. Am I trying to light a living room realistically (difficult since most people know what a living room should look like when lit, but creating diffuse natural lighting using theatrical instruments can be a challenge) or stylistically, using color and shadow to inflict mood and emotion.
The reason
McCandless has worked so well for me is that
McCandless takes care of dramatically lighting my actors, while at the same time (with levels kept low) gives me the
dynamic range to apply set and downlighting choices without worrying so much about washing out the
stage from excessive front lighting.
And to answer your question, all my warms come from
house left, with my cools coming from
house right. I do think it's important to have all the warms on one side, but I don't think it matters which side. I just do it this way for consistancy from show to show, and saves me from having to think too much during programming.
To those who haven't really given
McCandless a chance, I'd encourage you to try the approach I've outlined for a few shows, and then decide how well
McCandless works. Having the ability to light the actors with warm and cool from different angles gives me a lot of latitude when trying to
express mood, and when the warm and cool
strike the actors
face, there is so much interesting shadow tone that I find adds a very interesting
element and keeps the audiences eyes on the actors.
When lighting using the warm and cool sides of
McCandless, do you usually keep all the cool lights coming from one direction and the warm from the other, across the
stage? Or do you change the direction as you light across the
stage?