Peter Zongting Li is a highly skilled music editorial and sound post-production specialist based in Los Angeles, renowned for his contributions to the fields of films, animation, and TV. A multifaceted artist, Peter has garnered recognition for his exceptional music composition, sound design, and mixing capabilities across numerous films. His exceptional score for “Roller Coaster” earned him the esteemed “Best Score” award, while his masterful sound design in “Rebirth” secured the prestigious “Best Sound Design” accolade from Top Shorts in June 2023. We had the pleasure to speak with Peter about his career, current projects, and more!
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. For readers unfamiliar with you and your background, what drew you to a career in music?
Thank you for granting me this interview opportunity. To me, music represents an art form with which I have formed a profound and enduring connection over the years on the journey when I grew up. I studied piano at the age of three but never insisted on my practice until I finished high school and wanted to play it again. I tried DJing at the age of 17 and joined the metal band to play guitar and bass guitar at the age of 18. But I only seriously treated music as my career when I moved to Bay Area studying at colleges when I was 20. At Foothill and De Anza College, I explored many courses such as comprehensive musicianship, music production, choral study, musical appreciation and history, ensemble band, recording engineering, game audio design, etc… Through those years of exploration, I didn’t yet realize how important those courses were going to impact me in the future that makes me have music and sound become part of myself.
In my undergrad program at CalArts, I was first introduced to film scoring. I enhanced my music writing and orchestration knowledge. I also went to film school and studied film production sound, sound design, dialogue editing, Foley arts, ADR recording, and re-recording mixing. It was during my undergrad period at CalArts that I began to realize there were two potential careers in front of me: film composer and sound designer. At my master’s program at Columbia College Chicago, I really began to feel like everything I had learned was clicking. I was trained to write 20-40 cues for a feature-length film. Craftmanship together with storytelling in music writing makes me truly gain the power of writing music aligned with the picture.
During those school years, I did many student short films and crafted my skills to become my second nature. So, when I graduated, I already gained much experience working as a composer and sound designer.
Let’s talk about influencers and how they’ve impacted your career. You worked for and have been mentored by respected music editors and composers such as Shie Rozow. Please tell us more about your collaborations and, to what extent, these experiences have influenced your artistic ingenuity.
Shie Rozow, a distinguished luminary within the Hollywood film industry’s music editing domain, has profoundly shaped the trajectory of my professional journey. I consider myself exceptionally fortunate to have commenced my career under his tutelage and guidance, as his intern and mentee. Rozow’s comprehensive mentorship enveloped me in the realm of music editing for film, expounding upon pivotal facets including meticulous recording session preparation, strategic mixing session organization, adept cue arrangement, meticulous instrumentation coordination, and the intricate art of conforming—syncing the music seamlessly with updated visuals. His pedagogical approach, grounded in practicality, was underscored by hands-on involvement in actual film sessions, including notable projects for example PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (2023).
Undoubtedly, Shie Rozow has been an instrumental figure in expediting my professional journey. His mentorship drastically curtailed the timeline to achieve my current position—a trajectory that would have been considerably extended otherwise. Beyond the tangible skills, I’ve imbibed numerous intrinsic virtues from Shie, two of which warrant specific mention. The foremost pertains to an unwavering sense of responsibility to the composer. Acknowledging that a feature-length film may encompass an array of 40 to 60 cues, Shie impressed upon me that composers, though exceptionally skilled, aren’t impervious to oversight. As music editors, we’re entrusted with the role of discerning errors before sessions progress to recording stages—a meticulous endeavor that secures the composer’s vision.
A central tenet encapsulated in Shie’s teachings revolves around consistency and precision, succinctly articulated by his adage, ” No matter what sessions we are making, we need to be consistent and accurate.” These words resonate profoundly in my professional ethos, profoundly influenced by Shie’s unwavering professional ethics. His legacy continues to underpin my endeavors, lending credence to the gravity of maintaining a steadfast commitment to excellence in all facets of my craft.
You’ve written for various media projects, of varying sizes and scopes. Can you walk us through the process of composing and how it differs, depending on the medium?
Of course. When a film is being produced, the composer will get a roughly edited version of the film to spot the places with the director during this spotting session to figure out where there should be a piece of music to support it. We call this music “cue”. Different types of film will have different numbers of cues. For example, a feature-length documentary for 2 hours might have 60 cues; whereas a 12 min short film might only have 6 cues to compose.
Then after the music was written, the composer would go back and forth to revise the music to hit the notes as the director requested. When the director is happy with that result, the music editor will prepare the recording sessions for the music to be recorded live with real musicians playing the instruments. After the recording session is done, the music editor will work with a composer to glue a good composite from all the different takes, then we will bring the comp into the music mixing session. After music mixing is done, the music editor will conform the music with the updated picture to figure out the correct timecode, so that the music tracks will be inserted into the right spot during the re-recording mix stage, a.k.a. dub stage. At the dub stage, the sound engineer will mix music together with all the sound elements including dialogues, background, Foley, and sound effects to deliver a final sound mix. This delivery will be the end of sound and music post-production.
Can you share with us some of your most memorable experiences, and what did you learn?
My most memorable experience was working on the short animation Roller Coaster, directed by Sapphira Chen in the spring of 2023. Because I had two jobs in this film – music composer and sound designer. It was not an easy work to do. There were 6 music cues I wrote and 6 and a half minutes of sound designs I did in two and half months, with so many versions of iterations. Usually sound and music are separate two departments’ work in film post-production. But in this film, I was basically being a one-man band for the two departments. I had to keep switching my hats between two roles. For example, If I wore a sound designer hat, I would have to think what’s the best solution on certain spots in terms of sound, which definitely will affect some of my musical approaches. However, this type of hat-switching thing also made me learn a lot – As a sound designer, sometimes I need to give less detailed sound effects if music will lead the storytelling; whereas as a composer, I need to be careful while composing the music against dialogues. Because dialogue is always the number one thing for the sound post-production. If the music is pretty busy while the dialogue is on, then the audience will not be able to hear everything clearly. Therefore, the experience of working on Roller Coaster was really a good lesson for me to understand both jobs on a deeper level.
Congratulations on receiving the awards “Best Score” at the Top Shorts and “Best Sound Design” at the Los Angeles Film Awards (LAFA) for the film Roller Coaster. How far have your accolades impacted your approach to your artistry and work opportunities in the industry?
Thank you very much! I am truly honored that both my music and sound won awards in the prestigious film festivals. It is indeed a great achievement. Also, it is a good opportunity for me to meet more filmmakers who are looking for high-quality music and sound for their projects due to the film festival is a good platform for people to know their future team members. Because many people were invited there as members of the award-winning film. Their quality of work is qualified. I have gotten many projects from the people I met at the animation festivals and some of them became my friends after working with me a couple of times. I will undoubtedly keep joining film festivals with my future projects.
What would you say are the most challenging aspects of music composition and sound design?
The most challenging thing is definitely the balance between the two. Both music and sound play a very important role in the film. But there is definitely a hierarchy in certain circumstances. In general, a film without music might just be boring, but a film without sound is unacceptable. Therefore, my general approach is always to make sure the dialogue is prioritized in the sound section. After figuring out that all the dialogue can be heard as clearly as possible, I will go for hard effects such as gunshots, door slamming, and things hitting the floor. Then it is the moment I can start composing music as a composer with at least a decent dialogue and a hard effect to work around. This is a general guide to my workflow as both composer and sound designer. However, there are many special cases that can cause my workflow to vary. For example, the animated film I Roller Coaster just mentioned, has a 2-minute epic moment where the roller coaster turns into a dragon and pushes the dynamic of the film to the climax. Therefore, I wrote the music first to drive the storytelling and then added the sound effects later. The music will play more significant role than sound in that scene particularly. Frankly speaking, making a decision on the balance between sound and music is always challenging.
What advice would you give to fellow artists and the start of their careers?
Be responsible to your clients. I always believe that professionals will always want to have other professionals to work together. Because we all understand the hard part of collaboration for creative work. You might think you have already done your best to reach out to the director’s requirement, but he/she is still not happy about it and asks you to change it. Then you might feel frustrated. Whenever this situation happens, please remember doing revision is part of our jobs. People will remember that gesture that you are the one who always takes the responsibility to revise for his/her requirements. And they will continue working with you in the future and potentially refer you to other directors and producers.
What other projects are you working on?
Other than film and animations, I am also working on music videos as an assistant director. I helped Alexander Rybak to produce two music videos Hold Me and 1000 Views successfully in the past two years. They have reached out 1 million views and 4 million views on YouTube respectively. I am currently working on my own music video at this moment because I am also a street dancer in my spare time. Using my musical skills to create music for me to dance with and producing it to be a professional music video is really fun to do. I hope this can expand my career even more maybe I can become a music video director in the future.
Where can our readers find out more about you?
Here is my website where you can find some of my projects:
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