I really did try getting a scan of a sheet of paper. My results were always imprecise in ways that made them unusable. My biggest success looked a bit like this:
http://www.ondisplaymusic.com/images/notebook_paper_bkgrd.jpg
but even that was ultimately no better than what I was able to achieve artificially. The most likely culprit behind my failures was my digital camera, which exhibits limitations which would be anomalous in today's Best Buy or wherever.
For what it's worth, my poor pc has had much better luck dealing with multiple copies of a layer with smaller dimensions. I've decided to overcome other limitations by initially scrolling along the y axis and gradually transitioning to x.
Now to figure out how to tie the spotlight to the camera.
