The Powel Crosley Estate gives a wedding film Mediterranean architecture and open water in the same frame, which almost nowhere on this coast can do. Labif Filmhouse has filmed there, on Sarasota Bay.
Powel Crosley — the inventor and broadcaster — built the estate in 1929 as a winter home for his wife Gwendolyn. Dwight James Baum designed it in Mediterranean Revival style: eleven thousand square feet, more than twenty-one rooms, a seaplane dock and a yacht basin, on sixty acres facing Sarasota Bay. It went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
How it actually films
The house does the work. Arches, stucco and a two-and-a-half-storey façade give structure to a frame without a single light being placed, and the white exterior acts as a giant bounce — faces standing near the building are lit from below and to the side by the wall itself.
The bay side is the opposite problem: open, bright and backlit for much of the day. Shooting west across the water in the afternoon means either embracing the flare or moving the couple. Both are choices; neither is an accident.
What to protect in the timeline
- Portraits against the house early, on the water late. The estate has two completely different looks and they are not available at the same hour.
- The yacht basin and dock. Underused, and it is the detail that says this property and no other.
- Wind on the bay side. It is open water. Audio planning, not filming, solves it.
Kathy + Joel
Filmed at the Powel Crosley Estate on Sarasota Bay in February 2022. Their film is below.
Filmed at Powel Crosley Estate. See more of our wedding videography in Sarasota.