Clock Render/Problems and Solutions

Here are some screen grabs of the clock close up shot were the clock strikes 12. Initially I thought that rendering this scene was going` to be easy, however the combination of mental ray settings, large textures as well as the resolution of the image combined made the render take much longer than expected. I really don't understand why the render took so long, there were no other files or programs open.

The render itself took two days to complete and this of course slowed down production and prevented me from starting the UV maps for the character. Looking at the animation it, it seems a little too fast. Its too quick on the eye. This will have to be slowed down. I need to find out how to speed up the render if we have to do it again.