Filming for The Canal took place in Dublin, Ireland, in the middle of 2013. Funding came from the Irish Film Board and Section 481, Ireland's tax incentive for films and television.[2] While creating the script, Kavanagh drew upon his own fears and wrote the script in a "start-to-finish" manner, beginning with the first page of the script.[3][4] He also heavily focused on the film's sound, as he wanted it to be "as important as the picture" and did not use any pre-recorded archived sounds.[3][4] Kavanagh experienced difficulty with filming the footage for the 1902 reel, as he wanted it to look identical to Louis Lumière's Feeding the Baby.