couplathings,

in your movie settings,  render every 2nd frame. This will cut your render times in half and still give very acceptable smoothness.

do not use any dynamic clothing, dynamic hair, raytracing, anti-aliasing or other render intensive settings.

use the lowest res versions of figures for medium and far shots. Only use higher res for closeups.

use either the preview or poser 4 renderers, not firefly.

turn off shadows on all but a single (key) light and turn off casts shadows on everything except the most visually relevant figure/prop. If possible, eliminate the ground entirely.

There are many other tricks to help minimize render times, but many are sequence specific, so impossible to explain every one -  experiment. 

Output sequentially numbered *.tif files and then assemble them into video sequences in a program like Avid, Final Cut, Premiere, etc.

Use the smallest size required for the final project. e.g., 640x480 or 320x240 for web-based animations, 720x480 for standard 4:3 NTSC video and 848x480 for 16:9 widescreen video.

jerr3d, 

in actual fact, I believe the one-sided square would yield the minimum possible render time as it has 1 poly and 4 verts. 

The box has: 

     box_1                      384 polys          486 verts

HTH,

 
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