Hi there... first of all best of luck.

I recently completed a feature on a non pro miniDV and probably made just about every mistake in the book. There's a distinction, however, between mistakes that come along that you couldn't forsee and the ones you are forced to make by budget.
If you've got the cash, get a 3 chip camera. If you're forced to use a 1 chip camera then you really need to record seperate sound. Check out the web for suggestions on everything from DAT to mini disc. Ofcourse then you'll need a decent mic etc. The sound quality on the inbuilt mics on the small cameras is truly horrific. You can patch up a little bit of the 'whooshing' sound with some decent sound software in post production but you'll never shift that tell tale turn over of the tape in the camera.
We had no money whatsoever so recorded our sound on an old analog four track deck which was okay but turned post production into a living hell. Syncing up the picture and the sound was an absolute nightmare. The long and short I guess is that you need seperate sound and preferably someone who knows how to use it.
As for lights the first thing I would say you need is a monitor. That little LCD screen is a waste of time. We'd spend hours playing around with lights to get it looking nice on the little screen but by the time it hit a full size tv it was awful. Again, get someone to help out who has an idea of lighting and hook your camera up to a television while your lighting, you'll get a better idea of how it'll turn out that way.
Hope this helps.

I'd say don't worry about recording seperate sound, just be sure you use an external mike and monitor it from the headphone socket on the camera to ensure it's not too loud or too quiet. Unless the input stage of the mike socket on the camera is really noisy, and provided you have the camera set for 48kHz recording, DV audio is DV audio... it's all just bits on the tape. That will save a lot of hassle with syncing afterwards.

The problem is that a lot of non professional miniDV cameras don't have an external mic socket (mine didn't) and even if they do you're faced with the need for an adaptor to get the mic line to fit the socket anyway.

Oh, Ok, I didn't realise that they sold DV cameras without mike sockets. Conversion from XLR to 3.5mm has never been a problem in the past, we just used some magic cable which did the conversion, and a battery box to power the mike.

If you are looking for a cheap 3 CCD consumer cam, I would recommend checking out the Panasonic PV-GS120. It's retail is $699, but you can Buy It Now on ebay with $1000 in upgrades (lenses, filters, etc) for just $670. Also, if you won't be able to get yourself an external mic, that camera's internal mic is a zoom mic, so it coordinates with the zoom on the camera, its a nice little added feature.