The camera moves will be built in maya. I'm currently building assets. I wasn't specific enough in my previous post...

My Problem: From the beginning through to the end of the project, I need to plan for fast render speeds and decent visual quality (we're talking 10-20 s/frame on an i7 920)

Possible Solutions:
Low poly geo w/ high res maps
High poly geo w/ medium res maps
baking AO and lighting (what? how?)
Determining the fastest shaders and using those.

The thing is, I can't tell if any of these things have a major effect on render time, except for baking AO, Shadows, and GI. I'm sure that has a huge effect, but my assuption is you can't bake that when you have any moving objects. So I guess the best thing would be for me to figure out how to bake ALL lighting effects except for the lights majorly affected by animated objects. Does this make sense? Is it possible?