After relocating to Hampstead, award-winning filmmaker, actor and stuntman Jim Ford turned his Magnolia Reserve neighborhood garage, local landscapes and a supportive coastal community into the backdrop for his suspense thriller Confinement.
Photography by Hilary Cervantes
In Hampstead, it’s not unusual to find neighbors helping each other move furniture, lending tools or watching children. But in filmmaker Jim Ford’s neighborhood, those favors occasionally include helping build a movie set inside a garage or stepping in as a last-minute on-camera extra.
When he and his family moved to Hampstead in 2023, Ford brought along a long-simmering film idea for feature thriller called Confinement, and the quiet communities of Hampstead and Holly Ridge unexpectedly became the backdrop and support system for his project.
Ford’s professional resumé includes award-winning work as an actor, stuntman and filmmaker, with multiple honors and a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nomination. Years of consistent work in feature films and television shows paved the way for him to create some short movies of his own, and the success and acclaim that followed gave him the confidence to start working on his own feature film. While working on the set of a movie called Central Intelligence starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin Hart, Ford’s idea for the abduction thriller Confinement was born.
The logistics of bringing such an idea to fruition proved challenging. Finishing a script between jobs or on the road is a lengthy process. In a perfect world, Ford needed to assemble a crew, lock down a location and acquire all the equipment necessary to shoot for an uninterrupted amount of time. In the real world, there were schedule conflicts, changing family dynamics and the suitability and availability of locations and equipment differing from one day to the next. With other steady work keeping him busy, Ford put Confinement on the back burner.
Ford’s upbringing and much of his professional career took place in the Northeast, though the nature of his work eventually brought him to all 50 states.
While cities like Boston and New York have much to offer in terms of resources, Ford was always particularly fond of his time in Wilmington, North Carolina. After his wife changed work environments a few years ago, they seized an opportunity to relocate to Hampstead.
The Wilmington area, after all, has had strong ties to showbiz for a few decades. Beginning around 1983, it earned monikers like FILMington and Wilmywood since it served as the third largest television and movie production center in the country, behind only Los Angeles and New York City. Television series’ Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill along with movies like Ironman 3 and Scream (2022) are some of the areas more recent works of note.
In 2023, shortly after the Fords moved to Hampstead, the Writers Guild of America went on strike. Ford utilized the unplanned downtime as an opportunity to dive back into Confinement. Conveniently, the plot dictated that 75 percent of the movie was to be shot in one room. With encouragement and blessings from his wife, Ford and his cinemaphotographer were soon constructing the set in the Fords’ garage.
Still, Ford needed to settle on an area to shoot the remaining 25 percent of his film.
Having previously scouted state parks and lakes in upstate New York and Massachusetts, the idea of traveling to an alternate location was feasible though not desirable.
For the opening sequence of Confinement, local friends and neighbors offered a different suggestion: the Cape Fear River in Burgaw. Ford scouted out the location and found it perfect. The expansive, colorful forest and the gaping river running through it were the ideal juxtaposition to the holding cell-style set being built in his garage. After the requisite alligator and snake warnings were issued, the crew was able to capture some phenomenal footage with the aid of land, drone and underwater cameras.
With all the seemingly convenient aspects of filming predominately in Ford’s own home came the occasional snapbacks to reality. When the garage door was opened to take a break, for example, he had to be prepared to explain to his new neighbors why he had built a dungeon in there. When his children eagerly greeted him at the breakfast table, they expected to see their funny, loving father each morning — a far cry from what was left of the man who had just finished an all-night shoot amongst hostile kidnappers with ransom demands.
In many ways, Ford says, the abnormal becoming routine is a requirement of a life spent in his line of work. After all, in what other field is it necessary to have a network of people willing to literally set themselves on fire or skilled in detonating controlled outhouse explosions?
The more normal requests were facilitated time and again by members of the community.
“The Magnolia Reserve neighborhood, in particular, was always eager to assist, whether we needed a hand moving a wall or asking someone to jump in as an extra,” Ford says. “We’ve also been incredibly thankful to the Town of Holly Ridge. The Fire Department helped us out tremendously and gave us a great shot of them blazing out of the station for a tense moment in the film. We shot many scenes at Atlantic Mulch and Stone, and Suncoast Farm allowed us to film a car crash scene there.”
Ford also mentions Chill Pretty Boutique & Hair Lounge in Surf City for their help with location scouting, props and other production needs.
Ford talks about borrowing 18-wheelers and contracting pyrotechnic companies as if he were clicking them into his Amazon cart. It’s easy to wonder what ideas he could have done without in order to make the last two years easier on himself, but that’s not how an artist thinks. Identifying obstacles is part of his gig, but so is figuring out how to go around, over or through them.
“As a screenwriter, I want to write the best story, not just what I think is accomplishable,” Ford says.
This approach has previously generated success and bodes well for Ford’s future. Having a short film that was distributed and uncharacteristically profitable garnered interest in his other potential works. The script for Confinement generated enough interest from Netflix that they intend to review the finished work and consider it for distribution.
Ford does not sugarcoat that there is still much to be done: a little bit of shooting and a lot of editing. He hopes that Confinement will be available for your viewing pleasure sometime in 2027. Until then, you can learn more about Ford and become better acquainted with his work by visiting jimford.com. You can also catch his latest work as Dr. Adrian Noble on the pilot episode of the crime/drama series R.J. Decker, available now on ABC and Hulu streaming services.
