Happy Halloween! Google Doodle Marks All Hallows Eve With Pumpkin Carving

“When I was a little kid, Halloween seemed like the most grown-up holiday of all,” writes Sophia Foster-Dimino of Google’s staff. “For one thrilling night of the year, I got to stay up late trick-or-treating, watch scary movies with my friends, and wield sharp and pointy objects (safety first, of course!) while carving a macabre face into a pumpkin. “Now that I’m older, my perspective on Halloween has shifted a bit. It’s now the holiday that most celebrates a childlike sense of wonder and amazement.” Foster-Dimino and some colleagues decided to have some fun with Halloween by creating a “Google Doodle” to mark the day

You can tell they got pretty serious about their fun. They say they spent eight hours carving the six giant pumpkins they ordered from Half Moon Bay, Calif., about 30 miles from Google headquarters in Mountain View. They say in an email that they consulted Scott Cully, “the Guinness World Record holder for carving giant pumpkins,” to calculate in advance how long it would take to finish a 1,000-pound pumpkin. “Taking something this large and then knowing that you could possibly screw it up in front of the entire world, or whoever’s going to see the doodle, is a little intimidating,” Mike Dutton of Google says on an accompanying “behind the scenes video.”

They say they set the camera to shoot one frame of video every 20 seconds, although they tweaked it later “for comedic timing.” The result you see. Dusk comes just as they finish and light the candles. And they insist they did it all in one take.