What’s big and scary and orange and glows in the dark? If you said a jack-o-lantern, close, but not quite: Try Google’s latest, greatest doodle, a time-lapse video of a quirky pumpkin-carving jamboree.
And action: Six mammoth pumpkins—we’re talking the size of boulders here—rest on bales of hay in the middle of a grassy field, tended by six knife-wielding attendees wearing black shirts, one of which says “staff.” The story’s told in still shots, linked together in a kind of time lapse sequence.
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And then things take off, as the music, which my wife says sounds like a hot club number, kicks up along with the frame tempo. Passerby stop to sit and watch. Cleaners arrive with wheelbarrows to scoop up the pulpy pumpkin detritus. Someone in a Godzilla suit chases a woman with a tail out of frame. The face of some guy in a black bicycle helmet briefly fills the camera. Some of the carvers pause to perform the Village People’s “YMCA.” Others show up, it seems in costume, one holding a dartboard, another standing in front of a light green cylinder—either a trashcan or a Google Android robot-thingamajig. Uncle Sam drops by, as does a guy in an orange robo-suit and eventually even Santa Claus puts in an appearance.
The carving continues and you can make out the curve of a giant “G” at left. Clearly the six pumpkins—one for each of the letters in the word “Google”—are meant to be eponymous, but it’s not clear at this point how.
And then the shadows lengthen as the sun completes its arc, the black contours of leaf-filled tree branches spreading over the tableau. There’s some last minute posing and touching-up, and then, just as twilight arrives, the lights come on inside the pumpkins, revealing the elaborate work of the carvers, and voila: Google’s latest doodle (and scene).
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Matt Peckham is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @mattpeckham or on Facebook. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.