Wardrobe Malfunction: President's Tie Produces 'Moire' Effect on TV
BY DRU SEFTON
Posted on 04/15/2004 12:14:35 PM PDT by Incorrigible
| |
Wardrobe Malfunction: President's Tie Produces 'Moire' Effect on TVBY DRU SEFTON |
WASHINGTON -- Necktie patterns can behave in strange and mysterious ways on television. President Bush's tie at his Tuesday evening news conference is a case in point.
His selection, navy with small white dots, produced a moire (pronounced mwa-RAY) effect. Simply put, that's when a pattern being photographed interferes with the grid pattern on television screens, creating an eerie, shimmering visual.
Call it a wardrobe malfunction.
Many viewers puzzled over the phenomenon.
Nancy Mathis, a former television anchor, was watching when her phone rang. It was a friend who said, "Oh my God, it looks like his tie is on fire!"
Mathis knew exactly what the caller meant.
She now heads First Take Communications, a Washington, D.C., media training firm, coaching politicians and others on how best to get their messages across in important public appearances. As far as neckties go, some small patterns "end up having a life of their own" on camera, Mathis said. "And if it's something that distracts the viewer, it detracts from the message. The bottom line is, if you want to look solid, wear a solid."
She added, "I'm really curious as to why they didn't look at that tie on camera ahead of time."
A White House spokesman said the president's choice of ties "is not something we generally talk about."
But tailor Georges de Paris, with a shop near the White House, is very familiar with that tie. He said the president purchased it from him.
"It is a wonderful tie, he has worn it before," said de Paris, who has clothed presidents for 40 years, since Lyndon Johnson.
The tie is de Paris' own design, a fine silk with "very teeny polka dots." If it looked different on television, he added, "it's because of how the light reflects off of it."
It's a bit more complex than that, said Kenneth Brecher, a Boston University astronomy and physics professor who heads Project LITE (Light Inquiry Through Experiments), teaching students about light, optics, vision and perception. In physics-speak, the moire effect is "a beat frequency between two other frequencies creating an interference pattern," Brecher said.
Think of two transparent pages, each with an identical grid of lines. Place one transparency on top of the other and line them up; it appears as one pattern. Skew one slightly, and there's another pattern.
Moire is French, meaning "watered pattern," Brecher said, because the effect sometimes shimmers like it's wet. The phenomenon was discovered by British physicist Lord Rayleigh in the late 1800s.
A TV camera pixelates images, "producing dots in rows to create the picture," Brecher said. The dots are horizontal, which interfered, in this case, with the dot pattern on Bush's tie.
Voila, moire.
(For an animated example of moire, go to www.bu.edu/smec/lite/moire/moire_rot2_5.html)
April 15, 2004
(Dru Sefton can be contacted at dru.sefton@newhouse.com)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Screw the French, and if it bothers anyone else, put on some shades.
His jackets looked like they were alive!
Must be a slow news day.
The 'Moire' Effect - Fr - meaning watered pattern - Term used for John Kerry Candidacy
More (moire?)here:
http://www.lafoutloud.com/moray4.htm
As in attempting to attract the gay/lesbian vote?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.