Christmas party options

I have christmas party coming up on base and was asked to shoot it. I have all of the equipment below plus a few different options for lights. The shots will be from the waist up (That's what they are wanting)

This is going to be shot indoors with tungsten lights that are very dim. I was planning on gelling the flash/strobe units and shooting tungsten WB so there's no mix up in color (I believe it should be a CTO gel?)

Due to space I may not have TOO much room to set up equipment so here are the two set ups I was looking at and the questions I have about them.

Set up 1 involves three speedlites (One 580 EX II and two 430 EX II)
580 and 430 on light stands off to the left and right with umbrellas (solid) and the last 430 for helping light up the back ground. The only reason why I want one for the background is I don't have much space to work with so I can't have them stand too far away from the set up (I'm afraid of having the double shadow cast since I can't move them away from it)

Set up 2 involves two AB1600 borrowed from a friend of mine both with solid umbrellas off to my left and right high angled down.
Now because the light is going to fall off should I have just one as a main light and the other off to the side of them to help light the background as well?

I guess the issue is dealing with the small space and getting rid of harsh shadows. Any ideas?

Why not combine set 1 w/ set up 2? Use the AB's to uniformly light the background and your speedlites on each side of the camera. You can use your 7d to remotely fire the 580 and slave the other units. You will need some way to keep the ab's from spilling.

This is too funny as I'm doing the same for my ship.

Seamus69 wrote in post #13481554
Why not combine set 1 w/ set up 2? Use the AB's to uniformly light the background and your speedlites on each side of the camera. You can use your 7d to remotely fire the 580 and slave the other units. You will need some way to keep the ab's from spilling.

I'd like too but I dont have enough triggers for everything and I don't have the correct cables for the AB.

If I do the Speedlites I was going to use a trigger on the 580 and slave the other two off of it.

_aravena wrote in post #13481574
This is too funny as I'm doing the same for my ship.

I'm doing mine for NAS Panama city, which ship are you on?

USS Porter. I was at Corry last year but not for the Christmas party.

Bump for ideas!

Just had an Idea, I have two triggers so I think I might run One AB1600 for the background and put the other trigger on a 580 EXII and have that master a few other speedlites.

seoul4korea wrote in post #13485977
a few other speedlites.

You said, "The shots will be from the waist up", but not if it's a single shot, a couple, or maybe even a group, so I wonder how many other speedlites you think you'll need? "Set up 1" should work OK for a couple, & depending on the background, you might not need a light for it.

I just used a flash with my homemade whaletail and they turned out fine. Very nice. Wish I had a frame though for easier vertical. Just a lot of cropping to do now. Ugh