- Hello. I'm Gav. - I'm chilly.
You look chilly. Welcome to "Planet Slo Mo."
Today we're in a very chilly Seoul, South Korea.
I feel like in the past, Dan, we've filmed a lot of very impressive animals
doing very impressive things in slo-mo.
You know what else is impressive, though?
- Go on. - Humans.
- I mean, not us, though. Specifically not us. - Humans that aren't us.
- Yeah. - That's correct.
We're here to film the Kukkiwon Taekwondo Demonstration Team.
Taekwondo-- invented in Korea,
so by now they're pretty good at it.
- They've had enough time to get expert on it. - Yeah, I think so.
I've seen the clips of this demonstration team on YouTube, and it is nuts.
The amount of height they can get-- I can't wait to see it.
I think we should go and get into the arena,
set up the Phantom, film some crazy stuff.
- I'm up for it. - All right. Let's go.
( shouting )
So here we are in the taekwondo arena.
There's some audience seating and stuff.
However, this light is completely unsuitable for shooting high-speed.
It's actually very dim on the Phantom camera,
and it flickers like crazy.
So we went a little bit mental with the lights,
and we've got a bunch of 18Ks.
We've got all these Dinos at the back
that should look really cool.
So why don't we bring up the lights?
This is a grand total-- it's going to be a grand total
of over 145,000 watts of light.
Like, back in the day, when you used to have the incandescent bulbs,
you'd be like, "Oof. Got a 40-watter there."
- Ooh, yeah. - "Ooh, a 100-watt bulb? Are you kidding?"
- One of these is 18,000 watts. - I can already feel the heat.
It takes awhile to get up to strength.
I think we're on-- well on the way.
Probably get maybe a 2-8, 1,000 frames a second?
- Yeah. - It should be lovely.
Gav: Okay, I think we're ready to bring out the team,
film some kicking and flying through the air and that.
- Can't wait. - All right. Let's do it.
Okay, so we're at 1,000 frames a second.
We can only record for five seconds,
so I think we'll get the tail end of it,
and this move is going to be just a bunch of roundhouses.
- Okay. - It should be good.
- Sounds good. - All right, let's do it.
( shouting )
- Whoa. - ( shouting )
( gasps )
I mean, they just destroyed the equivalent
of what's probably a kitchen table with their feet
in about five seconds there.
- That was kind of scary. - Look at this.
Dan: Flip.
Gav: It's, like, heel-- like, ball.
Dan: You see the powder from the wood just get smashed?
Gav: Just sailing off into the distance.
Dan: Absolutely annihilated that piece of wood with his heel.
Gav: There's just splinters everywhere.
Dan: That would really hurt.
Gav: I feel like that would bloody hurt.
Dan: Just smashing...
Gav: Then it hits his hand.
He actually kicked the one from before.
Dan: It was still the air from the previous kick.
That's how quick it is.
Yeah, that looks nice when the wood bursts
with the backlight, that sawdust.
I wonder how many trees they've gone through?
Gav: And then big old final kick.
Dan: You got to remember, they've just kicked,
like, six pieces of wood,
and then that one's higher than the other guy's head.
A double spin.
Gav: Look at the levels of adjustment there.
Bloody epic.
Dan: That is impressive.
Have you ever jumped and kicked three things before landing?
Uh, no, I've mostly kicked
one thing, I think, but never three.
- We're about to learn how it's done. - All right.
( shouting )
( shouts )
I love the look to camera there, as well, afterwards.
That was great.
Gav: I feel like you would do that,
and you'd hurt the foot.
Dan: Man, that's so close to his face.
Look at curled and straight her feet are as she's in the air here.
Gav: It looks like, you know when you see in films
that people are on wires just sailing through the air
kicking through-- it looks like that.
Just walking through the air. It's like someone's swimming.
Dan: It is. It's like there's a set of stairs there.
Gav: Making use of each foot.
"I kicked with that leg. I'll kick with this now."
Dan: Oh, one after the other.
And the last one, she's on her way down.
- Gav: Oh! - Dan: Bang.
Gav: Look at that. Right in front of his face.
Dan: I wonder how many times they've been hit
in the face with that thing.
I think it's time we move on to some aerial stuff.
Wasn't that aerial? She was in the air, kicked three boards.
She was in the air, but she wasn't in the air.
Yeah? All right. Okay.
I'm talking humans taking flight.
I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued.
- Yeah. All right. - ( shouting )
Look at the braced positions.
Whoa!
Got some air.
Wood went, like, 40 feet in the air there.
It's an absolute hazard.
They got showered in wood.
Yeah, look. You see the spring-loaded procedure here.
Gav: There's two people being springboards.
He's being supported by the guy behind.
Dan: I think the second guy is just to support the bar.
Whereas the front person is doing a power squat
- to shove them into the air. - Gav: Yeah.
What an amazing sight.
Dan: Got some serious air there.
Gav: Oh!
- Dan: That is madness. - What?
Dan: It looks like they're in zero G right now.
They could be in space.
This guy here looks like an astronaut
just in the space station, just chilling out.
Gav: Look at that.
Dan: Look at all the powder and the sawdust
coming out from the wood there.
Gav: That is so impressive.
That's like someone's house exploded and the roof blew off.
Just raining pieces and people and wood.
- Dan: That's wicked. - Okay, so this one,
- four paddles. - Yeah?
Three on the way up, and for good measure,
- one on the way down. - Well, that's just greedy, for a start.
He's going to get three in mid-air, and then get one on the way down?
Three up, and then at the apex, he's like, "I need one more."
Just one day he was like, "I can get four here. I can do that."
All right. Looks like they're ready.
( shouting )
- Dan: Whoa! - ( shouts )
Flippin-A'.
- God. - GoPro's still in one piece.
Four pieces of wood separated by about 12 feet,
just smashed in about less than a second.
Gav: So he bashes it with his hand.
Dan: Bang.
Gav: That one gets the left foot.
- Dan: Two. - That one gets the right.
Dan: Oh! That one's annihilated.
He's in mid-air doing a weird half-flip twist.
And then he's like, "All right, I got to hit this now."
Oh, he's hit the metal there as well.
Gav: That's got to have been slightly painful.
Dan: That is savage.
I like how he absolutely started out like,
"Ow. But I'm not going to show any pain here."
All right, this one, Dan, it's a backflip with all the kicks in the world.
He's going to kick all the way around.
That's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Last time it was four, and I thought that was greedy.
- Now this is eight. - ( shouting )
Yeah, he's got this.
He'll run up.
- Oh, yes! - ( shouting )
- That was awesome. - Did you hear it?
He nailed it. It was so satisfying.
- It was over in a second. - Done.
- Sounded like a machine gun. - That was awesome.
Gav: Look at this. One.
Dan: He's putting power into these kicks as well.
Gav: Two. And the thing is,
I can imagine that would be hard
if you actually had a solid surface.
But these are giving him nothing. He's just kicking them.
Dan: You see how his foot stops just before that board
in order to get the maximum amount
of power and rotation into the kick?
Gav: Kicked the last one.
Dan: And he's got one more to get.
Gav: And he bloody got it as well.
Dan: Got it as well.
Going to try a very close, very wide,
- and very handheld shot. - Very scary shot.
I'm going to jam in here
and I'm going to go track it all the way around
and see if I can get it. It's ambitious.
It's ambitious. I feel kind of intimidated
being this close to it, as well.
Yeah, might get hit in the head with a board.
- Dan: Yeah. - We'll see.
All right, I think we're good.
( shouting )
I nearly took one to the face there.
God.
- Looks promising. - Promising, indeed.
- Dan: Goodness me. - That is a mad shot.
Dan: You got the flags in the background.
It's clearly someone upside-down
at least ten feet in the air
kicking things eight times in less than a second.
Gav: Look at that flair at the end.
Dan: Just for extra good measure.
That's what you call an action shot.
- Gav: That was cool. - It's awesome.
For a finale, we asked them,
"How high can you send someone?"
And they've come up with this sort of multi-stage launch system.
This should be bloody impressive.
- ( shouting ) - Multi-stage launch.
Ready.
- Whoa! - Aw, flip! And the landing he nailed, as well.
That was insane. That was so good.
That was-- that was so ridiculous.
When you think about-- that's just launched
from his legs off various items there.
I wonder what he squats, because that is some serious power in his legs there.
"Uh, mate, what are you squatting?"
I think he got more of a powerful kick there than I've seen today.
And the piece of wood almost hit the flags on the roof.
Dan: Look how far he's falling.
Gav: Look at how far he's going there.
It seems to be on the chest, onto the arms.
- Dan: This is the main launch. - Double push.
And then he seems to use both feet on the next--
No, it's just one foot. It's just one foot on each.
It's like he's going up what looks to be
two flights of stairs in two steps.
Dan: He gets some serious power into this kick as well.
- Gav: He kicked that to the moon. - Shatters it.
Gav: He is at probably roof height on an English house.
Dan: He'd be knocking out the satellite dish at this point.
Gav: Yeah.
Okay, look how far he's falling here.
That is absolutely insane.
Lovely stuff.
Well, that's it. I feel like we've got
some really good footage there,
but I've never felt so worthless
- in all my life. - So inadequate.
Yeah, just incapable of what humans can do.
How long do you think it would take you to get to this point?
Do you think if you trained for 10,000 hours, you could do that?
No, 10,000 hours wouldn't get me close to this.
Oh. I can do it.
To think that earlier there was a bloke
just way up above where we stood now.
They were moving so fast and covering so much distance through the air
that I was actually struggling with the refresh rate on the monitor.
It wasn't keeping up with them,
because I was so tight on some of them. Madness.
Well, hopefully you loved that footage as much as we did.
Feel free to subscribe to the Slow Mo Guys,
check out other episodes of "Planet Slow Mo,"
and tune in for part two where Dan will have a go.
Yeah. I've got this.
There's definitely going to be a training montage.