The Hemingway Home is a museum first and a wedding venue second, and filming there means working inside a historic site's rules. Labif Filmhouse travelled to Key West to film this wedding.
The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum sits on Whitehead Street in Key West, in a house built in the 1850s. The grounds carry mature tropical planting, a pool, and the descendants of Hemingway's cats — the property is a National Historic Landmark and an operating museum.
How it actually films
Dense tropical canopy over a walled garden gives soft, even light for most of the day, which is unusual and forgiving. It also means very little direct sun reaches the ground, so the exposure range indoors versus out is wide and needs handling at the point of shooting rather than afterwards.
Key West is a two-storey town with no tall buildings, so the sky is a bigger part of every wide frame than it would be on the mainland. That is worth composing for rather than cropping out.
What to protect in the timeline
- The museum's filming rules, confirmed early. Historic sites restrict crew, positions and hours, and those rules shape what a film can contain.
- Garden portraits in the canopy. It is the best light on the property, most of the day.
- Travel time to the Keys. For everybody, not just the crew.
Chelsea + Scott
Filmed at the Hemingway Home in Key West in May 2021. Their film is below.