Īs in the earlier Nanook (and his later film, Man of Aran), Flaherty went well beyond recording the life of the people of Samoa as it happened. The silver nitrate also caused spots to form on the negative. In the process, he inadvertently poisoned himself and required treatment after he drank water from the cave that contained silver nitrate, which washed off the film stock. Flaherty developed his film as he went along, in a cave on Savai'i. Moana is thought to be the first feature film made with panchromatic black-and-white film rather than the orthochromatic film commonly used at the time in Hollywood feature films.
This included both a regular movie camera and a Prizma color camera, as Flaherty hoped to film some footage in that color process, but the Prizmacolor camera malfunctioned. Flaherty reportedly arrived with 16 tons of filmmaking equipment. Hoping that Flaherty could repeat the success of Nanook, Paramount Pictures sent him to Samoa to capture the traditional life of the Polynesians on film. They arrived in Samoa in April 1923 and stayed until December 1924, with the film being completed in December 1925. Flaherty and their three daughters in Samoa for more than a year. In making the film, Flaherty lived with his wife and collaborator Frances H. The name of the lead male character, Moana, means 'deep sea, deep water' in the Samoan language. Moana was filmed in Samoa (then under the Western Samoa Trust Territory) in the villages of Safune district on the island of Savai'i.