'Angel of Music'

When filmmaker John Woosley was pitching his idea for a feature, he described it as “The Phantom of the Opera” meets “The Da Vinci Code.”

The cinematic merger has resulted in “Angel of Music,” a spin on the Gaston Leroux classic that is neither a musical nor horror version of the “Phantom” saga.

“It’s the idea of finding the truth behind the story,” says Woosley, whose film premieres today in Lawrence.

“It’s about this reporter who’s looking into a very well-known tale and the idea that it might be true,” he says. “If you read the novel, the author always claims it’s a true story. That proved intriguing.”

Woosley, a senior film student at Kansas University, originally sought to shoot a faithful period adaptation of the Leroux novel.

“We worked on it for about a year and a half,” says the Dallas native. “We actually started filming, and nothing went right. So I took some time off from the project and got in touch with this producer in Los Angeles. We were talking about the project and my idea for it. He told me that there was probably a reason that a faithful adaptation hadn’t been made and I should try to figure out why that was.

“It turns out that it can’t be done faithfully to the novel because the story is really boring.”

So instead, Woosley rounded up a cast and crew of locals and staged a hybrid version which combines historical revision with shadowy intrigue. The feature-length project was shot on high-definition video in Lawrence, Lenexa and Leavenworth.

“What I wanted to do was take the story that everybody knows and do something with it that no one’s ever done before. I think it’s really successful,” Woosley says.

“Angel of Music” will screen at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Sunday, August 23 at Liberty Hall, 644 Mass. Cast and crew members will be in attendance.