Luke Jaden directed two films for PETA, including this one titled “Inhumane” which highlights a family of sheep fearing for their lives on a farm–and for the inevitable day when they will be slaughtered for meat.
Jaden–an alumnus of SHOOT’s 2023 New Directors Showcase–explained that the campaign was aimed at “silent storytelling. Looking back at the power of silent film–we wanted to show that animals are not silent. Animals may not be able to talk like us humans, but they are just as sentient as us and animals can communicate a conversation between one another. They are highly observant and intellectual beings. So, we wanted to highlight the feelings they do feel, which I would say was the biggest challenge. We captured them in their natural environment in a docu-style approach to not distract them as the camera can be an unfamiliar thing. We wanted to craft and build a conversation that would coalesce as a narrative between the animals and their families on the farm. We really wanted to show those ideas on-screen and we wanted to approach this with a sensitive, unobtrusive lens that captured the honesty and fear these animals can and do feel on a farm before they are killed by their owners.”
Octagon Haus was the production company on the PETA work, which came out of agency Viewmaster.
