12 Hour Shift (short film

from Art&Animation Portfolio 2021

12 Hour Shift (graphic series

A dream-like animated ‘documentary’ about a typical workday at the steel plant – the place where clouds are born and fiery magic goes on. As we follow the workers, we discover the full process of steelmaking.

Plot:

Before the shift, the factory worker exercises to activate his body. After exercising, he puts on his helmet, and smokes a cigarette to activate his mind. He is immediately immersed into the workflow. As two coke chemists are leaning over their oven, coal becomes coke. The oven turns into a railway – fresh coke is being transported to the cooling chamber. This process is supervised by a beautiful and feminine machine operator. She represents the women of black metallurgy. In the process of cooling, steam is released – the famous thick clouds of Kryvyi Rih are born. We’re readyto fire up the blast furnace. The next worker peeks out of the cloud of steam – he pours agglomerate into the blast furnace. Light is shed on the cast house of the blast furnace, where a furnace worker takes a sample of fresh cast iron. He tells his colleagues a funny joke; it is rumored that furnace workers are the funniest guys at the factory. Encouraged by laughter, he pours cast iron, which flows, flows, and falls into a tub of molten steel ‘borsch’ in the shop of continuous casting. The steel ‘borsch’ flies over some pleasantly tired metallurgists, who are in a hurry for a well-deserved lunch break. Today’s lunch is red borsch (traditional Ukrainian dish), as red as hot Ukrainian steel. The metallurgist raises a spoonful of borsch to his mouth, swallows it, it floods his body with hot nutritious goodness, and transforms into hot steel billets flowing along a conveyor line. A worker of the continuous casting shop emerges and cuts up rivers of hot steel into blooms. The steel is ready for rolling and becoming part of a structure. The rivers of molten steel transform into steaming chimneys, which turn into the last cigarette lit by the tired metallurgist at the end of his shift. The shift is over. Satisfied with his productive and important work, the metallurgist goes to sleep. He sees a dream about red dogs and the eternal fire over his steel plant, which indicates the ceaselessness of the steel manufacturing process. While one metallurgist is dreaming about red dogs, his colleague is already preparing for his 12 hour shift. 1/5

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photos of the ironworks

This is a series of photos I took when visiting the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Kryvyi Rih. They provide an explanation of the visuals for my ‘12 Hour Shift’ film.