Idea's for a studio shoot

I am photographing the cast in the school production of 'Hairspray'. This musical is fun and lively so I will need to show this through my shots. The shots are for the programme and will be viewed by all the audience so they need to be simple yet effective.

This is the photograph from 'Hairspray' the movie. It is very vibrant and full of fun with plenty of smiley faces. My images need to show this same type of emotion.

I am reasearching good lighting techniques as I have not done a big studio shoot before so I need to know exactly how to position my models correctly and to get the most out of the picture. I need to now plan these positions and ensure that I have a vast range so the images are not too alike.
I have had a bit of a practise with some shots as I am using a different camera. Today I am using a canon 50D which is different to my usual 1000D. The camera has different fuctions and is a lot more powerful which will hopefully bring out better quality in my pictures.

I had a practise with some students and I took some head shots and half body shots. This type of image is very close up and can show some potential flaws in a model etc. However I think as the light was quite bright this did not happen. The colours are very vibrant and stand out well against the skin.

This image was working out how to keep 2 or more people in the shot without the back person going to blurred out. I think the image shows that emma (the girl in front) is more of the main character. The girl behind is clearly however still in the image and still fully focused.