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Marco Costanzo is a prominent American sound designer who has worked on many famous films. You should know that if you are watching a movie and you hear a stunning horseback chase, metal buckles clinking and hooves stomping on sand or stones, it was Costanza who took up his big leather boots filled with dry peas.

A sound designer is a professional who is responsible for creating, editing, and mixing sounds for various types of media, such as movies, video games, television, and advertising. They not only use existing sounds, but also create new ones to convey the desired atmosphere and emotions.

Costanzo is the son of an artistic-minded interior decorator, who frequently took him along on jobs that required a sharp eye for color, texture and design. When he landed on FDU’s Metropolitan Campus in 1977, Costanzo wanted to study business in order to someday launch a company like his father’s. But that changed when he started taking elective courses in film production.

“I’ve watched foley artists at work,” Dick says, “and it’s incredible how they can correlate sound with movement, so that you think the footsteps you hear really are those of the character.”

One of the most difficult challenges for Marco was the film “Silence of the Lambs”, specifically a scene where he had to find a way to convincingly create the sound of Hannibal Lecter (a crazed psychopathic cannibal) taking a giant bite out of a prison guard’s face. Costanzo, who had recently signed a contract for a studio position as a sound designer, was responsible for creating the horrific sounds, teeth sharp as razor blades, capable of biting through flesh and bone. At that time, as a young university graduate, coming up with the right sneeze sound required “a lot of patience and ingenuity,” not to mention this job.

“We wanted to get a “snap” effect,” Costanzo says, “but we also wanted the sound of the teeth penetrating. In that situation, you’re biting into flesh … but at the same time, you’re scratching along the guy’s skull.”

Searching for the perfect sounds, the inventive Costanzo experimented with slowly crushing eggshells and squeezing water out of soaked rags … before finally deciding that the electronically amplified sound of “human teeth crunching into a raw apple” was a perfect fit.

The sound effects that Costanza helped create played a key role in the film’s success. It was the beginning of his worldwide fame as a sound designer.

Another example of Marco’s unsurpassed work, to create the ambient soundscape for Lee’s “Life of Pi”, where a lifeboat floats endlessly on the ocean, he and a colleague filled a large metal container with water and used wooden paddles to stir it rhythmically. The outcome was a realistic effect that convinced viewers they were hearing waves striking the metal sides of the boat.

One more challenge Lee presented was capturing the “massive, crashing sound” needed for each of “The Hulk’s” powerful footsteps in the 2003 film. The sound designer carefully chose from a wide array of heavy boots, galoshes, and other sturdy footwear to create a series of booming thuds that initially seemed just right. However, Lee kept insisting the footsteps needed to sound “bigger and heavier.”

“He wanted each step to feel like a giant was shaking the ground,” recalls Costanzo. “So I spent countless hours stomping around a warehouse and dropping huge rocks onto various surfaces until I found just the right combination to match the enormity of the Hulk’s steps on screen.”

Throughout his film career, which continues to this day, Marco has so far worked on more than 450 Hollywood flicks, including iconic films by famed directors Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Joel and Ethan Coen and Ang Lee.