I know that most of them are real but some of the look like such perfect cones, they look like painted metal. Are they cloth that is super starched or are the metal or plastic?
Can you provide some examples of these “too perfect” ones?
We need a specific example, because most times the answer will be “yes”. Flags on podium flagpoles are amazingly common.
Perhaps the specific picture you meant.
@Chronos and @gnoitall Here’s a link to an image in my google drive. I’m not very good at embedding images. Flags.
I thought someone said here or elsewhere that the flags are pinned or secured in place to look that neat.
At a minimum, they’re draped carefully and there’s nothing to disturb them.
I think they usually are, but those ones at the US embassy in Jerusalem look like they really are weird cone things. In this picture, the stripes aren’t actually parallel to the edge of the flag, and they look pretty similar to this product from an Israeli company.
Nice find! The link to the Israeli product shows a spherical top to the “pole,” in a brushed-nickel sort of finish, and your first picture, of Blinken, with those “flags,” has the same thing.
It looks like the answer to the OP is: “generally they are real flags, but occasionally not, and it looks like the photo you found is of the latter.”
As far as I can tell, they are generally real flags. But they might just have been doctored in ways to make them look neater and more photogenic. It is TV after all. Just like how the politician, before making an appearance before camera, might have their face touched up by a makeup artist. Some of them may have something inside / behind holding them in place.
There is a flag used by the French president (or at least it was used by recent predecessors - I’m not sure if Macron has ever made use of this flag) for televised appearances, which is not a proper French flag, but which has the white stripe much narrower than the blue and red stripes, so that the three will appear to be the same width in a close-up TV shot. See here. And here.
Link to a similar thread that I started: https://boards.straightdope.com/t/intentionally-distorted-flags-as-backdrops/1014464
From following one of those rabbit-holes, the Bolivian flag includes a seal, but there’s a version of it where the seal is rotated diagonally, so it’ll be upright when draped from a pole.
Here’s another example of a flag that looks too perfect. This picture was taken in Qatar but I’m pretty confident that I’ve seen these “flags” outside of the Middle East.
They look real to me, but they also look like they’re made of something stiffer than regular cloth. It looks more like a heavy windbreaker type material or vinyl.
Particularly for pictures taken in Israel because it’s an Israeli company.