Peter Zongting Li is a multi-dimensional sound and music supervisor based in Los Angeles. His sound and music work has been recognized internationally, with films and media projects spanning China, the U.S., Japan, Austria, and beyond. Between 2023 and 2025, he served in the music department on major international productions including PAW Patrol, DreamScapes (featuring the voice of Kate Winslet), For the Living, and The Truth Within (TV series), among many others.
Most recently, in 2026, his work has earned him a new round of honors: his sound design for the film We Are One won Best Sound Design at the 2026 New York International Film Awards™ (NYIFA); his sound design and mixing for the animated film Guan earned the Best Sound Design award at the 2026 Touchstone Independent Film Festival; and he served as sound supervisor and music editor on Solar Eclipse, which won Best Sound Design Short at the USA International Film Awards.
His upcoming feature film The Pool Boy (featuring Antonio Jaramillo and Kimani Bradley) will premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on August 29, 2026. We are honored to speak with Peter about his insights into film music and sound, and about his remarkable career.
Hello Peter — it’s a pleasure to speak with you again after three years. You’ve been busy with a number of new film and television projects since we last talked. For readers who may be unfamiliar with you and your work, could you start by introducing yourself?
The honor is mine — thank you for having me back. My name is Peter Zongting Li. I am a Chinese music and sound supervisor in the motion picture and television industry, living and working in Los Angeles in the U.S. Since I first got my hands on post-production work back in 2015, during my college years, this is now my 11th year in the industry. I am still working hard and learning new skills every day to sharpen my tools and my understanding, so that I can lead my role in the music department, the sound department, or both.
That sounds like a fascinating position — heading the music department and supervising sound at the same time. Could you briefly explain the difference between the music department and the sound department?
Surely! Music and sound are very similar in a way, because they are both audio-based elements, compared with the picture-driven content. However, in the motion picture and television industry, the music and sound departments play very different roles in post-production. Music is usually more emotionally driven — a score that accompanies the scene or leads the storytelling — whereas sound is realistic for the most part; it is simply there to make things make sense and let audiences believe they are in the story.
So music and sound serve very different functions. Could you tell us more about music’s role first, before we step into the world of sound?
From my experience, music plays three main roles.
First, it takes the leading role in the storytelling, going together with the picture. For example, when there is a chase scene or a fight scene, the picture usually arrives at the peak of the story’s conflict, and the music should lead the storytelling as its emotional momentum for the dramatic feeling. You must have watched some fight scenes in your life, and you probably noticed that the music is usually extremely high-stakes, bringing the tension to its highest point. That is the storytelling-leading way of using music.
Second, the film obviously will not be at high tension everywhere. For most parts of the film, it might just be dialogue-driven, or a completely quiet scene where the camera is simply pointing at certain objects or frames that show the location. In those cases, music can stay in the background as supportive material. Sometimes it can be very ambience-like, to make the dialogue more fun to listen to, or it can just be a texture-driven string ensemble that paints the mood within the scene.
Last but not least, sometimes music can be a filler or a stinger inserted for a title card, a logo, or a jingle for certain objects. This type of music is very functional and only appears for a short amount of time, but it is also very important — because whenever audiences hear it, they will recall what those objects are associated with.
Thank you for such a detailed explanation of music’s role in film. As for sound — what part does it play?
You are very welcome. From my perspective, sound plays a very different role from music in terms of storytelling. To quote one of my sound mentors, Craig Smith: “Whatever makes it sound good is good.” I have used this quote as my principle throughout my entire sound design and mixing career, because sound is the most objective and realistic thing to relate to the picture.
From a door slam to a chair moving, from a rain ambience to a thunder strike — all of them are picture-related. So whatever can be there to go together with the picture and make it sound right is usually just the right sound design. I believe less is more. Whenever I find or design the right sound in my head, I will not layer on more sounds, so that I can avoid redundancy. I know many beginner filmmakers and sound designers like to pile up many elements to depict one thing, but to me that is a no-no. Overall, sound shouldn’t be noticed when you want your audiences to be totally immersed in the story.
“Sound shouldn’t be noticed” — that is an insight most audiences would never even think about. Could you give us an example of good sound design working as “unnoticed sound”?
Totally! Take panning, for example. By the textbook, you should pan the sound of a motion to the left, the right, or even the surround speakers, depending on its location in the scene. If a ping-pong ball drops on the left side of the scene, then by the definition of panning, you are supposed to pan it to the left speaker. However, in my practical experience, I try to avoid extreme panning as much as I can, because extreme panning makes the audio suddenly jump out of the speaker on the side you panned to.
As an audience member in the cinema, you may immediately feel awkward hearing it and turn your focus toward that direction, which pulls you out of the story — your attention is drawn away from the scene and onto the media itself. You never want the audience to feel like they are watching a piece of media; instead, you want them to feel like they are in the scene. Therefore, even though panning is necessary by the textbook, in practical work I avoid it for the most part. I am sure other sound designers have different opinions, but sound design overall is an audio art form — it can be subjective, too.
Thank you for sharing such deep insights into sound design. Congratulations on winning Best Sound Design at the 2026 New York International Film Awards™ (NYIFA) for We Are One. We also noticed that We Are One was an official selection of the 2026 LA Shorts International Film Festival and screened publicly at Laemmle NoHo 7 on August 3, 2026. Could you tell us about your experience working on this film, and what it was like to hear your own sound design and mix in an IMAX cinema?
Thank you so much! This is one of the works I am most proud of in my career over the past three years. I was lucky to be hired and trusted by the prestigious director and wonderful writer Angie Lin to be the head of the sound department for both production and post-production on her film.
Before I went on set, Angie had already told me that I would be doing the post-production sound design and mix for this film. So when I went on set to do the production sound mix — recording all the production sound details, the dialogue, the movements — I already knew in detail what I was going to record. And because I knew I would be the one doing the post-production sound work myself, I was even more responsible with the production sound recording, so that I wouldn’t put myself into trouble later. To be honest, I think this is the only correct way of making great sound for a film: when production sound and post-production sound are handled by the same group of people, they will be more responsible and more detail-oriented, since they already know that what they record on set will become their final material.
On top of the many details I captured on set, I also foleyed a great deal of motion sound for different clothing materials, because We Are One is an action movie. Angie came to my post house to help with the process of designing all of the Foley, which I really appreciated. It was such a great experience to record, Foley, design, mix, master, and eventually listen to what you have done in a professional IMAX movie cinema. The surround mix sounded so powerful, and I could see how the audience was immersed in the story while watching it in the cinema. At that point, I knew my sound work was successful. That was a great life experience indeed.
Looking back over the past three years, were there any other interesting projects you would like to share with our readers?
I worked as the sound designer and mixer for a video game named Back from the Other World, I Missed Love. It is an interactive video game where you play as the main male character and choose from different options to interact with different ladies, each leading to a different love storyline. It was a very different experience compared with a conventional film post-sound mix, because we had to work on many different clips based on the different options in the story. So the sound design and ADR recording were done clip by clip. In the end, we had a game development engineer adapt the clips into the game engine, so that players can choose their own destiny.
AI films and AI voices have become increasingly popular in recent years. What is your perspective on the future of the sound field in the film industry?
I was about to bring that up. In the past two years, AI began to emerge as a new trend in the world. It has deeply changed how films are being made, especially with regard to sound post-production. There are many new tools that can do voice cloning, which can help reproduce the characters’ voices if they didn’t deliver a line correctly in the live performance. However, it is also on the edge of infringing on the talents’ rights to their own voices. I am more old school in this new trend — I still believe a real human performance and ADR can deliver the best, most lively lines, with full dynamic range and human emotion.
However, producers and directors sometimes want to use voice cloning to save on budget, or sometimes it is simply hard to work in person with the talents again, because they might be in different areas after the production has wrapped. So I acknowledge that voice cloning can indeed save a lot of time and money sometimes. But I wish there would be a standard or a law to regulate the process, so that as someone who might be using these tools, I wouldn’t need to worry about legal issues.
Thank you so much for speaking with us, Peter. Where can our readers find out more about you and your work?
Here is my portfolio website, where you can find more of my projects: www.peterlisound.com
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