UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · DEPARTMENT OF ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY | PREPARED BY SCROLLY SCIENCE · OCTOBER 2026
Professor Edward Cheng
A Creative Proposal
A hip joint quietly losing its blood supply, often found too late, and treated differently depending on the surgeon who sees it. This is the first international, evidence-based guideline for putting that right, and it deserves to be seen by everyone who treats the condition and everyone who lives with it.
Studio
About Scrolly Science
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Research
The Paper
Nontraumatic Osteonecrosis of the Femoral Head: An International Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guideline — Cheng EY, Mirzaei A, Goodman SB, Cui Q, Mont MA, Jones LC, and the ARCO Clinical Practice Guideline workgroup. The Journal of Arthroplasty, 10 April 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.arth.2026.03.056. PMID: 41967526.
Osteonecrosis of the femoral head is a condition in which the ball of bone at the top of the thigh bone loses its blood supply and begins to die. It can strike people of any age, silently or painfully, and left to advance it can collapse the joint. As your guideline sets out, the problem has never been a shortage of treatments; it has been the opposite. There is a wide array of management strategies, and which one a patient receives has too often depended on the individual surgeon's judgement rather than on consistent evidence.
Your work, led through the Association Research Circulation Osseous, is the response to that. An international, multidisciplinary panel, deliberately balanced to limit the influence of conflicts of interest, worked through the evidence using the GRADE approach, the recognised standard for building clinical recommendations, and reached consensus on twelve recommendations for how this condition should be diagnosed, evaluated and managed. The recommendations were then reviewed externally, including by a health policymaker and a patient, so the guidance answers to the people it affects.
Two things at its centre make it a strong subject for a film. It turns on accurate staging and on knowing when a patient's pain is actually caused by this condition, which is exactly the kind of judgement a clear visual can sharpen. And it is written to help clinicians identify the patients who could keep their own joint through joint-preserving treatment, rather than progress to a replacement. That is a message with a wide and human audience, from the surgeon in clinic to the patient trying to understand a frightening diagnosis. Most of them will never read the full guideline. A film gives it a second, wider door.
Paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arth.2026.03.056
PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41967526/
Staff page: https://med.umn.edu/bio/edward-cheng
The Hip We Can Save | Draft script and scene structure
The Script
Running time written for 60 seconds, five scenes, and scales cleanly to 90 or 120. A first draft, built from your paper, and a starting point rather than a finished thing.
Timing
Visual
Voiceover
0:00–0:12 · The hook
A clear 3D view of the hip. The femoral head, fed by fine blood vessels, is shown in good health, then those vessels fade and the bone begins to darken from within.
At the top of the thigh bone sits the ball of the hip, and it depends on a quiet, steady blood supply. When that supply fails, the bone begins to die. It is called osteonecrosis of the femoral head, and it can affect people of any age.
0:12–0:28 · The problem
The condition advances silently; a subtle change becomes a collapsing surface. Alongside, the same patient reaches several different surgeons and is offered several different paths.
Early on it can be quiet, so it can be missed until the joint has already begun to give way. And when patients are seen, the treatment they are offered can vary widely from one surgeon to the next, shaped as much by individual judgement as by shared evidence.
0:28–0:44 · The work
An international group forms around the problem. Evidence is weighed on a clear, methodical scale, and resolves into a numbered set of agreed recommendations.
So an international panel, convened through ARCO, set out to change that. Working through the evidence with a rigorous, standard method, they agreed on twelve clear recommendations for how this condition should be diagnosed, staged and managed.
0:44–0:56 · Why it matters
The hip is staged accurately and early; the path forks, and the patient's own joint is preserved rather than replaced. A wider view shows care becoming consistent across many clinics.
Stage it accurately, and catch it in time, and more patients can be matched to treatment that preserves their own joint, instead of replacing it. One shared, evidence-based standard means fewer people fall through the gap.
0:56–1:00 · The close
A calm closing frame. Guideline title, authors, journal, and the link to read it in full.
The first international guideline for a condition that has waited a long time for one. The full guideline is below.
This script is a first draft, built from your paper. Every word is open for refinement together, and because it is a clinical guideline we'd expect your team to check the medical language closely.
Look and feel
Visual Direction
Two written directions. Both are described so you can feel the register before anything is drawn. Given your brief spans specialists and patients, our steer is to build one accurate clinical system and lead it with the human thread where the film opens and closes — a decision for the alignment stage.
Option 1: Clinical Realism
Specialist teaching register
Accurate 3D of the hip and the femoral head, close on the anatomy, the failing blood supply and the staged progression shown as a clinician would recognise them, with the imaging that staging relies on brought in where it helps. The register is that of a high-end surgical teaching film: precise and unhurried. This direction speaks most directly to the specialist audience, the surgeons, radiologists and residents who will use the guideline in practice. For your paper this earns its place because the guidance turns on staging and on recognising the condition accurately. Palette: restrained and clinical, true to anatomy, with a single clear accent to mark the moment staging decides the path.
Option 2: The Patient's Path
Warmer, wider reach
Warmer and more human. The film follows a single patient from the first quiet symptom, through diagnosis and staging, to the fork between keeping the joint and replacing it, with the guideline as the thing that routes them to the right path. The anatomy is still accurate but simpler, and the weight falls on the person. This direction reaches the wider audience your brief names, the patients, families and carers, as well as primary-care and non-specialist clinicians. Clinical Realism is stronger for the specialist audience; the Patient's Path carries further with a general audience.
Deliverables
What We Will Build
The deliverable is a complete, launch-ready film built to the highest production standard.
01 / Master film
A Scrolly Explainer at the agreed length
Professionally recorded voiceover, original sound design and a music bed chosen to fit the tone. Delivered in full resolution at 16:9. Built for conferences, teaching, your institutional and society channels, and anywhere you present the work.
02 / Short-form cuts
30-second and 15-second edits
Edits from the master for social and any targeted promotion. The argument compressed without being simplified.
03 / Square and vertical versions
9:16 and 1:1 reformats
Reformats of the master for LinkedIn, X and other platforms. Reframed and re-edited where the composition demands it.
04 / Full ownership, every format
All final files in full resolution
You own the finished work outright, with no licensing restrictions or ongoing fees.
Four stages
How We Work
Four stages from alignment to delivery. From contract to delivery is approximately four to six weeks for the standard build.
Alignment
01
We make sure we fully understand the guideline, the audience and what the film needs to do. The script you've seen is a starting point. We refine it together until every line earns its place, and this is the stage where your team checks the clinical language for accuracy. Nothing proceeds without agreement on what the film is saying.
Visual development
02
We build the chosen visual direction into a full storyboard, scene by scene, so you see exactly how the film will move before a frame is animated. You choose the direction and, if you want narration, the voice. Nothing goes into production without your sign-off.
Production
03
Our team builds the film. You have a review point at rough cut, where you and your colleagues can give consolidated feedback before the final pass. We don't disappear and come back with a finished film. You're involved at every milestone.
Delivery
04
Final files in every format you need, with a guide on where and how each cut is best deployed, then the distribution campaign if you choose to run one.
Timing
Why Now
There's a real reason to move now.
Path forward
Next Steps
The next step is a short call to walk through the draft script, agree length and audience lean, and decide how your team will check the clinical language before anything is animated.
Confirm the direction
01
Confirm that a film for surgeons, teaching audiences and patients — with Clinical Realism or the Patient's Path as the lead — reflects your goals for the guideline.
Refine the script
02
Review the draft together and check the medical language closely. Every word is open for refinement.
Choose the visual lean
03
Decide whether to lead with Clinical Realism for specialists, the Patient's Path for wider reach, or one clinical system with a human open and close.
Begin production
04
Once scope is agreed, begin alignment and script refinement, then storyboard and production on a four-to-six-week standard build.
Legal
Legal and Commercial Terms
This proposal is prepared for Professor Edward Cheng and his co-authors, and is otherwise confidential. The script, visual concepts, creative direction, and structural approach in this document are the intellectual property of Animara Studios Ltd until a formal agreement is signed and a deposit received. This document is not a contract or binding agreement. All pricing, timelines, and deliverables will be confirmed in a separate Statement of Work. Animara Studios Ltd operates under English law.
Animara Studios Ltd. Registered in England and Wales. Company number 16074216. 701 Stonehouse Park, Sperry Way, Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, GL10 3UT.