San Francisco
Jesse first visited The Golden State on a family trip in third grade to visit his father's workplace in San Jose. On the trip they visited Monterey Bay Aquarium, Muir Woods, Santa Cruz Boardwalk and downtown San Francisco. Jesse's father, Larry Murdock, was a computer scientist and programmer for various companies based in the bay area while the family lived in the rural parts of western Kentucky. When Jesse was in Middle School, his father took a job at Leap Frog learning enterprises that required a full time move to Berkeley, California. Jesse stayed in Kentucky where he finished high school, and worked on his grandfather's farm to pay his way through college at Murray State University. Upon completing their undergraduate degrees, Jesse and his wife, Toni, made the move out west to a studio apartment in Berkeley with two suitcase and their guitars.​​​
​​​Jesse worked and resided in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2015 - 2021 spending 2 years in Berkeley, 2 years on the Oakland/Emeryville border, and 2 years in the Twin Peaks neighborhood of San Francisco. During that time he helped produce over 1,000 events as the Lead Project Manager and General Manager of a major local audio visual company.
What began as pushing road cases and setting up AV equipment quickly developed into more technical roles as an audio engineer, video technician, lighting designer, and project manager. Excellent mentorship contributed heavily to his rapid advancement and profound success in the San Francisco event scene. After 3 years of working his way up through every position of the company, Jesse had become the General Manager and secured a preferred vendor status in nearly every premiere event venue in Northern California while the company owners celebrated an early retirement in Hawaii.
By 2019, Jesse had successfully produced and designed AV for over 1,000 events. He moved into a penthouse suite near the geographic center of San Francisco at the top of the highest mountain in the most expensive city in the world. From the top of the world he spent his evenings creating 3D SketchUp models of over 50 event venues that his company frequently worked. He rendered lighting designs with VRay and used Unreal Engine to make 3D models and VR walkthroughs for clients which included several of the most recognizable companies, universities, organizations and individuals in Silicon Valley. This became his first digital twin, during an era that was just scratching the surface of the defining the term. Given his profound success and record sales numbers, Jesse and his wife decided they could become a single income household and begin expanding their family by welcoming their first child into the world.
Covid-19 Pandemic
In March of 2020, the world went on lockdown while Toni was 7 months pregnant. Jesse spent the next 3 weeks fielding $1.2 million in cancelled events and lost revenue while the industry supporting his lifestyle became illegal. In April, his daughter was born 5 weeks premature in a hospital flooded with covid patients, weighing only 4 pounds. She stayed in the NICU for the first few weeks of her life with heavy restrictions on visitation hours given the global pandemic that only allowed one visit per day and only one parent to make that visit. The stay resulted in a $153,000 hospital bill.
By September 1, 2020, the largest wildfire in California history had turned the sky blood red. The shops downtown had boarded up their windows and fentanyl took its hold on the city's homeless population. Helicopters from ongoing protests did their route turnarounds directly outside the penthouse windows and what used to look like stars on the ground from the lights of the city became strobes of blue and red police lights on every corner of the city. Their bank account hit $0 and he was forced to formally leave the company he had spent years developing.
Recovery & Hope
Once everything was lost, it became apparent that the only direction to go was up. Jesse began applying to graduate schools and industry friends were quick to offer creative work to him on any leads that they could get that met the new social distancing guidelines. This included drive through projection mapping experiences, live streaming company meetings and product releases, and general interior design for home office conversions.
Jesse was accepted to several universities for graduate school and chose the 3+ year Master of Architecture program at Arizona State University as his final landing spot. Their standing as the #1 University for Innovation was a major contributing factor, especially given his passion for Unreal Engine Development and desire to design for entertainment spaces. The short flight from PHX to SFO and OAK allowed him to stay relevant in the Bay Area event scene and continue production with various organizations as the world opened back up.
As he moved to Arizona for school, Jesse began working a full time remote position as a production designer for an entertainment company based out of Pennsylvania and Los Angeles with a focus on Unreal Engine Previz for Stadium and Arena tours. This experience exposed him to a scale of event that was previously unobtainable with the inventory of equipment from his previous company. The mentorship of the company's owners, clients and senior staff guided Jesse through finding his own design voice in architecture, art, lighting, and events. They designed stages, lighting, and video for Grammy Award winning artists, nationally televised events, and festivals across the globe while Jesse studied towards his Master of Architecture degree.
In his final year of the M. Arch program, Jesse left that company to pursue a local Architectural and Structural Design position in semiconductor manufacturing and focus on a more pure form of Architecture. After graduating with his M. Arch degree, he resumed creating Digital Twins for Entertainment Spaces, this time as a freelancer and artist at his own company. Jesse now partners with the biggest names in AV, Entertainment, Event Design, Fashion, Lighting, Reality Capture, Temporary Structures, and Wedding Design with one ultimate goal: To Make Cool Stuff.
Murdock - Digital Twin of San Francisco, CA
