Hres a hint. Set your movie setting to use Display settings rather than render settings and you can generate a 5 second animation in a matter of minutes (maybe quite a few minutes) but much faster than rendering each frame.  Its good for checking action and camera angles but you wont get some of the lighting and textures .  

To cut render times substantially you will need a huge increase in your system processor. 

I dont know if Daz Studio is much faster than Poser but it might be worth a look .  The animation controls are much better than they used to be .

You can also go with 24 frames per second rather than 30 - maybe not a saving for a 5 second anim but worthwhile for a 5 minute short.