Nikon Users - Editorial Night Shoot?

I'm doing an editorial night shoot later on this week. It's not in the very least professional - simply just for fun with some friends.
I use a Nikon D5000, and I wanted to know if anyone had any tips on setting simple lighting (I'm not going to go out and buy some sort of expensive lighting apparatus or something), exposure, f-stop, white balance, ISO, flash/no flash, all of that.

ANY detailed answers will be picked for best answer!

Added (1). DETAILS - (sorry, i forgot to include them earlier)

SUBJECTS - around 4-5 models at most
- WILL All BE SHOT OUTSIDE OR IN NIGHT CLUBS
- WILL FLASH IN THE BACKGROUND WORK? THERE ARE 2 PHOTOGRAPHERS So WE HAVE ACCESS TO ANOTHER FLASH ON CAMERA

What's the subject? Under what conditions are you shooting? Without further info it's a bit difficult to help specifically.

With no supplementary lighting other than your on-board flash, you're going to be in the realms of high ISO, wide apertures & longer shutter speeds - you may well need a tripod.

The on-board flash will not illuminate very far - don't expect great results from it. You could try some slow sync rear curtain stuff - might be effective. If you're using the flash to light up a person in the frame, either make sure you're filling the frame with them, or switch to spot or centre weighted metering. If you use matrix (multisegment) metering & your subject is a small figure surrounded by dark, then the flash will tend to nuke your subject as the camera meter will be seeing a lot of 'dark' in the frame & turning the flash power up high (in TTL mode). Alternatively, set your flash power manually rather than rely on TTL.

Your white balance will depend on the colour temperature of the lighting (ie sodium lamps, fluorescent), but if you have mixed sources (ie sodium + fluorescent, sodium + flash, fluorescent + flash), you're going to find this hard to sort out - your could try a manual WB using a grey card.Pro's usually gel flashes to match the ambient light so that there's no clash in WB.

Btw this Q is not about Nikon - its a general photography question - the camera you are taking the shots with has nothing to do with it.

Edit: You say that you have access to another flash on camera to light the background. How, exactly, do you propose to trigger this to fire when the principal photographer is taking the shot? Even if the other flash is a Nikon speedlight on camera, your D5000 does not have the Nikon CLS wireless capability (unless the other flash is an SB800 or 900 which have optical slave modes).

Deep Blue is right. Any camera can be used.

Shooting night shots requires that you set your ISO rather high to avoid blur caused by camera or subject movement. The other thing you need to be aware of, is the way the subject is lit. That can make or break the shot. In the end you will have to custom white balance for the lighting and use your light meter to decide the shutter speed (highest possible) and aperture

What is the actual assignment?

Night street vendors?

Light rail ridership at night?

Fans leaving a football game at night?

We have to have some kind of reference.

NOTE:

Outside the night club, you can use high ISO settings and a way to brace the camera to prevent movement.

Inside the club (with the managers permission) you will need a flash and flash diffuser. There's a way to allow the ambient light in the background to light it at about two stops down from your primary exposure and gel the flash to match the incandescent light (85B) in the club. Of course you will have to set your white balance for incandescent light