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.