Before meeting any of the characters of West Side Story, the audience is first acquainted with the city that that the story takes place in: New York. The co-directing team compromised of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins begin with an aerial shot of Manhattan passing over many recognizable landmarks before settling on a small, fenced-in, concrete playground where we first meet the Jets, an Upper West Side white gang. From here, these gang members (the Jets) break into an amazing song and dance routine, and from there a "daring, high-stepping sequence - an exhilarating, inventive, visual ballet of pirouettes, vigorous athletic moves, and running jumps that symbolizes their dominance and energy - [symbolizing that] they are readying themselves for a gang brawl." We then see the same with the Sharks.
Without going into any real detail about the plot of the film itself, we would like to mention some other basic film techniques that Wise and Robbins made use of in their film adaptation of West Side Story. The most important thing that they used to their advantage was lighting. Throughout the movie, the use of light and shadows is very impressive. A fair amount of the film takes place at night, which added to the overall effects of the film. When Tony (Romeo) first meets Maria (Juliet) at the dance, they each seem to become entranced, and everything around them seems to blur out of focus leaving only the two of them. The lights go out, leaving them to be the only things illuminated on screen, suggesting love at first sight.
