Crane began as a high school video class project with Alex Sawvel cast as the lead role of Jonathan Crane. Two scenes from Brandon Kehiayan's earlier draft of the script were shot with Luke Ostermiller as both the DP and Director, but the project stopped after Alex Sawvel (a friend of Kehiayan and Ostermiller) was killed in a car accident. Almost two years later, Crane finally was completed when Ostermiller and Kehiayan decided to finish the film as a tribute to Sawvel with an entirely new cast, a slightly altered script and with Kehiayan as the director. Luke Ostermiller still did the cinematography and produced the film.
The scenes that take place in Clint's basement are shot in the basement of the same house used for shooting Lori's death scene. This basement is also where the nightmare sequence after Jonathan's drug trip was filmed.
Crane was filmed entirely in just two brief shoot days.
The cast for the three main roles in Crane (Jon Trujillo, Hilarie Nelson and Sam Thompson) have previously acted alongside each other and with the film's director (Brandon Kehiayan) in theatre performances.