Fastest workflow for this situation.

Hi, all. I'll be working on a five minute film in a few weeks with only twelve hours to produce the final cut before it goes off to have the sound mixed. I'll be ingesting footage from the Panasonic ag-hmc154er, meaning I'll have to log and capture the footage first. I'll be working on FCP 7 on an iMac with 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with 2 GB of ram and limited storage space for output to SD DVD.
My edit is a little ambitious. I'll be referencing the style of The Tracy Fragments. This has a really high render time considering the time constraints.
Does anyone have any suggestions for the fastest ingestion/ render workflow?