Well, the Follow-The-Bouncing-Ball format that the Fleischer Brothers worked up for their cartoons, from about 1925 on, was to basically split the screen into two frames, the animation above, and below, a scroll of white text on black background, with a ``bouncing ball'' consisting of a white-painted ball on the end of a long black stick. As the music moved along, a performer would hold the ball over a note and bounce it forward with each word as appropriate. (They tried animating it, to start with, but found that looked more fake, unless the words were animated as well.)
Anyway, if I were to try setting up a karaoke machine with (let's say) 1940 technology, and insisted on having a motion-picture background, I suppose what I'd do is base it on a standard 35mm projector. The projector's aimed at the singer, presumably above his or her head so as not to be too blinding. The words are printed on the bottom of the film, and there's a glass pane-style signal splitter to reflect an image of the film -- and, of course, the words -- onto the ground or a table or similar spot to see.
The geometry of this might not be fully credible -- I haven't tried drawing it out -- but it seems like you could get reasonably close with this. The film naturally provides its own music.
If you can do without the projected image in back, then I can see it this way -- you have a record player, and a piano player-like scroll of the lyrics to be presented on a table by the microphone. You load the lyrics into the machine, set the timer for how long each line runs and how fast the words go across, and then have a sort of typewriter ball that goes across the line and zips back, then scrolls up the next lines of lyrics. You need that timing information but presumably that's included on the sleeve for the song scroll.
no subject
Well, the Follow-The-Bouncing-Ball format that the Fleischer Brothers worked up for their cartoons, from about 1925 on, was to basically split the screen into two frames, the animation above, and below, a scroll of white text on black background, with a ``bouncing ball'' consisting of a white-painted ball on the end of a long black stick. As the music moved along, a performer would hold the ball over a note and bounce it forward with each word as appropriate. (They tried animating it, to start with, but found that looked more fake, unless the words were animated as well.)
Anyway, if I were to try setting up a karaoke machine with (let's say) 1940 technology, and insisted on having a motion-picture background, I suppose what I'd do is base it on a standard 35mm projector. The projector's aimed at the singer, presumably above his or her head so as not to be too blinding. The words are printed on the bottom of the film, and there's a glass pane-style signal splitter to reflect an image of the film -- and, of course, the words -- onto the ground or a table or similar spot to see.
The geometry of this might not be fully credible -- I haven't tried drawing it out -- but it seems like you could get reasonably close with this. The film naturally provides its own music.
If you can do without the projected image in back, then I can see it this way -- you have a record player, and a piano player-like scroll of the lyrics to be presented on a table by the microphone. You load the lyrics into the machine, set the timer for how long each line runs and how fast the words go across, and then have a sort of typewriter ball that goes across the line and zips back, then scrolls up the next lines of lyrics. You need that timing information but presumably that's included on the sleeve for the song scroll.