In 2008 I attended the Telluride film festival and found myself sitting next to film producer Bill Pohlad before a screening.  I asked him what he was working on and he told me a bit about Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, which is finally coming out this Friday after a lengthy post-production process that ended with a Palme d’Or win at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  He also told me about a companion piece intended for IMAX. As I was talking to him as a film lover and not a journalist, I couldn’t report the story.  Luckily, I was able to sit down with him (and Dede Gardner) today for the film’s press junket and finally get something on the record.  Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

Question:  I actually ran into you at the Telluride Film Festival a couple of years ago and you mentioned that there was a companion piece you were considering that was going to be possibly done in IMAX. What happened to that? Will we see that footage?

Pohlad:  Yeah. No, that’s still in the works. Obviously this became a bit overwhelming, getting Tree of Life where it should be and where everybody wanted it to be. And that period, a year ago, when we wanted to be in Cannes but it didn’t feel right and we needed a bit of extra time. And you know, when you’re getting to that point, you think, “Okay, lets wait on Voyage of Time and concentrate on what we’re doing.” But it’s still a strong desire of Terry’s and we’re all kind of working on getting it together.

Will there be footage that you shot for Tree of Life involved in that or will it be entirely new footage?

Pohlad: There will be footage that we shot during The Tree of Life in that movie but not the same footage. You know, it will be different.

Will it have characters or is it more focusing on the history of the universe type?

Pohlad: I don’t know that I would want to presume, you know…

Dede: You never know! Largely the latter.  But again, it’s going to change too.  Some new stuff is getting shot and we’ll see what happens.

Are you using IMAX cameras for this or are you using the same cameras from Tree of Life?

Dede: It’s a variety.

Pohlad: Yeah, it’s a variety.  The cameras that were used for the Smithville section and most of the character work is one set of cameras and the stuff, the natural history things, there were a variety of cameras used depending on the situation. Some were IMAX and some weren’t.”