Changemakers: Behind the Scenes of Common Enemy with Angel Lugo

This gift for capturing memorable, evocative narratives comes from over a decade of experience as an event and wedding videographer, editor, and photographer. A graduate of Drexel University’s film school, Angel has edited hundreds of impactful videos for The Humane League’s social media, in addition to various educational videos and short documentaries.

Angel took the time to take us through his truly creative process for editing Common Enemy, and how he combined a love of horror films with a passion for real change.

You’re credited as a writer on this documentary, and also its editor. Could you describe the process of shaping the narrative into the story you wanted to tell?

Wow. Great question, because it was definitely a process! A film goes through several writing stages; the edit is basically the final stage. One thing I knew from the beginning when I started editing Common Enemy was that I was going to have to make audiences somehow connect with the state of Oklahoma and its residents. Many folks derisively consider the middle of the United States as “flyover country,” broadly dismissing rural America and the millions of people who live in those states. When we use pejorative language to label and categorize large groups of people and places, it becomes easier to miss each other’s humanity, and to dismiss other peoples’ problems (which also often happen to be our collective problems). So I wanted to dispel that notion right off the bat by highlighting the beauty of Oklahoma and its residents, and making the state one of Common Enemy’s main “characters.”

This entailed personal research so that I could connect with a state I’ve never stepped foot in, and emphasizing the need for beautiful, scenic b-roll of Oklahoma’s landscapes to the production team before they started filming. It involved digging into a lot of old archival footage of Oklahoma to help summarize and visualize some of its history. I utilize a lot of this footage in the documentary.

Equally as important, I wanted to do right by everyone we interviewed. Interviews are vulnerable situations. You’re often asking a stranger deep questions, they’re revealing a lot about themselves on camera, and they’re trusting that you will tell their story truthfully. As an editor on a documentary, you then need to figure out how to balance their truth with creative decision-making, because there’s a lot of content out there for people to choose from, and documentaries aren’t often at the top of the list. So I needed to be factual, I needed the audience to be able to empathize with our subjects, and I needed the film to be visually interesting.

Tell me more about your choice of imagery to enhance what’s being said. How do you choose between subtlety and explicitness when dealing with factory farming, as it’s an issue that is both largely unknown, and difficult to know?

What's happening inside factory farms is absolutely difficult to know. And of course that’s deliberate on the industry’s part. Many companies are happy to show you how their product is made; factory farms tend to be less transparent. For Common Enemy, I erred on the side of subtlety for the factory farm footage. This is another delicate balancing act where you have to be mindful of what is going to be most effective for the story you’re trying to tell.

So one of my goals was to communicate to audiences the horrifying nature of factory farming, but not to the point where they might close their eyes to the violence happening onscreen. I don’t want people to tune out, or to walk out of a screening and miss the message. I chose to show the “standard practices” that occur in animal factories, because the baseline treatment and conditions of farm animals are already inherently distressing and cruel.

And this choice speaks to the larger context of the film. Oklahoma is not an extreme example of a state overrun by animal factories like North Carolina or Iowa, but the severity of the baseline is bad enough to get non-vegan, everyday working-class “Okies”—the main subjects of our documentary—to organize, become activists, and fight against what is happening to their state. The more explicit footage absolutely has its place, but this documentary ultimately didn’t call for it.

Major kudos to the activists at We Animals Media and Mercy for Animals for all of their incredible work venturing into factory farms to capture compelling photography and footage. Much of the footage of the interiors of factory farms in Common Enemy is from those dedicated organizations.

I remember being so intrigued by the trailer you shared. It was bookended by true crime, and played into this ominous, horror aspect. How did your film influences show up in your editing decisions, if at all?

Aw dang, what a fun question! I’m glad you found the trailer intriguing. I’m a lifelong student of film. I watch it all from the arthouse, to older musicals, to horror and everything in-between. Movies make me so happy. Inevitably, what you watch ends up in what you create in some shape or form.

When interviewed for Common Enemy, former pig rancher-turned-activist Suzette Hatfield said to “frame [the story] as true crime.” I knew immediately that line had to go in the trailer, because people love watching true crime, and because these factory farm corporations have been getting away with so much crime (environmental violations, price fixing scandals, intimidation, labor exploitation, just to name a few) for so long!

I’ve seen many animal rights and environmental-type documentaries. And of course I take influence from those, but I also learn what not to do by watching them. I don’t like films that are overtly propagandic or talk down to their audiences. On top of all that, my love for horror films naturally lends itself towards editing this type of subject matter. You might notice that in the ominous sound design of both the trailer and the film. And one specific short documentary directly influenced how I would treat the archival footage by placing it in that frame against a solid black color. The movie was The Sentence of Michael Thompson. This short film floored me, and I highly recommend it to anyone.

The visual metaphors of factory farming were compelling, so I’d love to hear more about this footage framing. We have the “breaks” from the interviews—this small screen of montages that feel like flipping through TV channels.

There’s also this unsettling map animation at the end of the film. Factory farms spread like a rash throughout the country, and the final image looks like an X-ray exposing disease. It shows what happened here can happen to anyone. Not to belabor the metaphor, but no one is immune.

Yes! And some of that archival footage in that small frame you mentioned provides a glimpse into what Oklahoma was like before the disease of factory farms started spreading. It was important for the film to depict the way things were in the past to illustrate how bad things have gotten. And shout out to Mark Middleton, who created that alarming map animation using data provided by Project Counterglow. Corporate agriculture is our collective problem; it is not slowing down, and that’s scary and sad.

You’ve created a documentary that gives everyone the right to know what’s happening in their own backyards. Where can we go from here?

That’s a big one. And I’m not a terribly optimistic person. But I think Cherokee Nation activist and water protector Pamela Kingfisher says it best at the end of Common Enemy: “We don’t have to just sit here and take every little thing that comes down the road... we can be participants in this democracy and have a say; it might not always work out the way we want it to all the way, but you gotta try.”

So, keep trying. Keep fighting the good fight, because it is the right thing to do. Reach out to and connect with other activists who have done the legwork in other states and countries. Learn from them and implement their successful strategies.

And if you hear that a factory farm is coming to your town, google “how to stop a CAFO,” organize a community group, brush up on moratoriums and county ordinances, and prepare for a battle. That’s what a few animal activists in Wisconsin are doing right now. And of course, follow The Humane League, volunteer with us, take action with us. We’re doing some great work to help a lot of animals.

Why does this kind of filmmaking interest you, and what do you want to create in the future? Could there be a feature-length version of Common Enemy someday?

With Common Enemy, we’ve proven what we’re capable of with a small crew and a tight budget. I’m sure it would have elevated this film’s impact if we had the resources to make it a feature, but I’m very proud of the impact it has already had on people. Documentary filmmaking interests me simply because I’m a curious person and I love to learn about things. And I like to take those things I learn to make informed decisions and lead a better life. Bruce Lee once wrote, “absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is essentially your own.”

In the future, I think I’d like to work on projects that expose more of the crimes that these corporations have gotten away with, especially when it comes to human rights violations and labor exploitation. I think this area has been underexplored in film and journalism, and I don’t think we should let these companies off the hook.

On the fiction side of things, I personally think it’d be really cool to write a horror screenplay that is set against the backdrop of a town afflicted by factory farms. Fiction can often be better than nonfiction for helping people learn truths and see new perspectives. That said, I have very high hopes for Common Enemy’s potential to reach new people and to spark meaningful conversation, action, and positive change. It was an honor to be a part of this project.