The Slow Mo Guys

Submission 39,143

Part of a series on Slow Motion. [View Related Entries]

About

The Slow Mo Guys is a YouTube channel in which Gavin Free and Dan Gruchy film things in extreme slow motion with an expensive camera. The success of their channel has netted them millions of subscribers and their videos regularly gain millions of views.

History

On October 15th, 2010, the duo uploaded their first video to YouTube. It is a trailer for their channel, outlining what they'd be doing every week in future videos. As of January 20th, 2017, the video has over 1.6 million views. The series premiered on November 5th.

Their videos use various Vision Research Phantom high-speed cameras, capable of shooting over 343,000 frames per second.^[1] They quickly became very popular. In April 2011, the channel was voted the winner of YouTube's On The Rise program. In September 2012, their episode involving crushing watermelons, shown below, was featured on The Tonight Show.

Rooster Teeth Productions

On 20 February 2013, Free confirmed that the series had been picked up by Rooster Teeth and that further episodes would be released on Rooster Teeth's website in addition to The Slow Mo Guys' channel.

Awards

The series was nominated for a Webby Award in Best Web Personality/Host (Online Film & Video) in 2016, but lost. At the 2016 Streamy awards, the series won in the Cinematography category.

6ft Water Balloon

On May 3rd, 2011, the Slow Mo Guys premiered the first of several videos featuring a 6ft water balloon. The video (shown below) of the Slow Mo Guys filling up, jumping on and popping a 6ft water balloon has received more than 159 million views in six years.

Since that video, the Slow Mo Guys have produced several videos (examples below) featuring giant water balloons, amassing more than 80 million views.

On June 17th, 2017, the Slow Mo Guys uploaded a video of The Slo Mo Guys' co-host Daniel Gruchy submerged in the water balloon. The video received more than 4.7 million views within 48 hours of posting. That day, Redditors posted the video in the subreddits /r/ContagiousLaughter,^[2] /r/roosterteeth^[3] and /r/video,^[4] where the video collected more than 3,000 points.

That day, Redditor bortzbot posted an image from the video of The Slow Mo Guys' Daniel Gruchy inside the water balloon in the /r/PhotoshopBattles.^[5]

Within two days, the thread received more than 23,000 points (92% upvoted) and 740 comments. Some of the photoshops received more than 1,000 points each (examples below).

That day, Redditor lobsteryo posted the image (shown below) on the /r/DankMemes subreddit with the caption "So you're in the club and this guy slaps your gf's ass. What do you do? Oh yeah, he's 6'3" 250 pounds, all muscle." The post received more than 2,000 points (97% upvoted) and 50 comments in 48 hours.^[6]

Christopher Giles Attack

On January 26th, 2018, an Albuquerque man drove 700 miles from his hometown to Austin, Texas with the intent of harming Gavin Free. According to Austin detectives, Christopher Giles (shown below, left) had "developed a fondness" for Free's girlfriend Megan Turney, an anime, video game and relationship vlogger (Turney and Free shown below, right) and a disdain for Free.

“A search of Giles’ cellular phone identified various notations identifying Megan Turney and Gavin Free by name,” wrote one detective in the documents. “Furthermore, threatening thoughts were recorded by Giles and directed toward Gavin Free, i.e., ‘I want Gavin Free to die alone, with no children.’”

That evening, Giles broke into Turney and Free's home at about 3:40am. Awoken to the sound of breaking glass and a gunshot, the couple hid in their bedroom closet and called 911. When Giles' search proved unsuccessful, he left.

Police found the assailant backing out of the driveway and ordered him to stop. Then they heard one gunshot come from the car, and an officer fired. He was pronounced dead shortly after. A postmorteum has thus far been unable to determine if Giles shot himself.^[7]