In the realm of contemporary naturalistic portraits, Tom Quinn's Slamdance award-winning The New Year Parade, a study of a family in the midst of its breakdown, stands out as memorable in its raw emotional depth. It's a quiet film, fit for a plaintive mood which yearns, at the end of its contemplation, for some hopefulness and reconciliation. In that way, The New Year Parade is a triumph, that it draws you into a bitter moment only to show how lovely all the healing of that bitterness can be.

The portrait focuses on brother and sister, Jack (Greg Lyons) and Kat (Jennifer Welsh), as they navigate the rough landscape of their parents' divorce. While Kat lashes out with subtly in relationships that run awry, Jack isolates himself from his girlfriend and father, in the process also pulling away from the structure he's lived in the entirety of his life, the rehearsals and preparation of his string band for Philadelphia's Mummer's Parade. Over a period of three years, Quinn worked intimately with his small cast and crew to capture this story both of a region and of a generation.

In the first part of this conversation, to be continued in the next issue, Quinn speaks to his working process with the actors, the fusion of narrative and documentary elements and the importance of that do-or-die crew member.

SM: At IFF of Boston you mentioned that much of The New Year Parade came out of interviews you were doing with your friends about divorce. You were seeing a lot of intersections, that they were saying a lot of the same things. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what those interviews were like.

TQ: Basically we would just start off talking about what they remembered before their parents' divorces. My friends were all different ages when it happened. Some of them were 25; some of them were three and four and don't remember much at all, or just have a photo or two. Then we just traced what they remember about those years following it. I was pretty fortunate that my friends are pretty honest and trusting and told some really personal stories. It's was weird because even with some of my closest friends, I didn't know the specifics of the situation. You usually get a one line summary by this point in their lives. Mostly they've moved past it, want to move past it or think it's not that interesting or unique, so they don't really talk about it much in detail anymore. As we were talking, I started to find that people were telling similar stories in similar ways, sometimes even down to using the same phrases. That became the jumping point for us to start pulling a narrative from.

I tried cutting a documentary out of it at first, and it just felt like every cut was changing the meaning of their footage. The purpose was just to have them talk meaningfully in a way that they maybe don't get to do much. I just felt that by editing it and turning it into a montage of different people talking about the same subject, it just felt like it started to wash and lose the power of the specifics. So we turned it into a fictional story, still using those feelings that they were relating that were somewhat universal for them as a jumping point for the characters.

SM: Although I was very much with the theme of divorce throughout the film, the theme I was more attached to--and it's a theme that works in with the divorce--is that of abandonment. Divorce in and of itself is shocking, but I think it's the abandonment, as part of the divorce, that's almost worse. And so, I was really interested in the relationship between the father and son and then also the mother and daughter, the sense of abandonment by the children in those. I broke it up by gender without really meaning to, but I don't know if that was intentional [on your part]. It says, though, a lot about the relationships between the actors, that they were able to somehow take you away from the idea of the film strictly being one about divorce.

TQ: Almost at the end of the editing process, we started to realize it was more a film about family than it was about divorce. In some ways, by looking at how something's falling apart, you learn what people were trying to get out of it, what's important about the family, what they got from each other.

I think that the band, in a lot of ways, is just a big family. If you watch the credits, you'll see two or three generations of each name. When we started out the film, the band was probably a structure, a local flavor to put in. We weren't really sure how the two storylines would interact at first. Then, as we started to shoot with them,--we initially thought we would shoot for about two weeks--they welcomed us in, and we ended up shooting for about two and a half years. Building up to the 2005 parade, we would go shoot maybe twice a week, bring the actors down. As we'd sit around with the band members after practice, they would start to open up, one guy saying, "You know, I don't talk to my dad all year, but we'll go up the street together." That's when we started to understand the power of what they do. At that point the father-son storyline started to become more and more important to the film. It was sort of a universal piece--what these guys are getting from each other, what the different people in the family are trying to get from each other. In both you have pieces that are broken, you have power struggles that are shaping both the band and the family, and those two things start to pow-wow in a really nice way.

What helps is that the actors are really trusting of each other, kind of like they're a little support group. Especially since most of them had never acted before, they really relied on each other, telling stories about personal experiences, things like that. Since we shot over such a long period, they sort of formed this mini family both within the actual film family but also with the band. So, we'd be off on a hiatus for two months, and when we'd get back together to shoot, it would just be everybody's excitement and energy of seeing each other again that, I think, came across in the film in a nice way.

SM: Now over that three year period, it was pretty much the cast, the band, you and Mark Doyle. There are some really great stories about the way that you two, as the primary crew, had to work together. You've said that he was incredibly helpful about making sure that, especially if you were concentrating on performance, he was really on to check that the lighting was set, that the composition would work. So I was hoping you could talk a bit more now about working with Mark Doyle.

TQ: I remember a few years ago Peter Broderick did this whole series, I think, for Filmmaker Magazine on the ABCs of low-budget filmmaking, and he said that one of the things you need was the do-or-die two or three person crew, the people that will be there no matter what happens. When everything else is falling apart, you have this core group to rely on. With this film, that was basically Mark, who I'd met right before we started shooting. The first week of shooting I was calling a lot of people to see if they could come down. Mark had bronchitis, and as soon as he got his prescription, he was on set. He was still sick, but he started doing sound.

We just formed a really nice, natural relationship. Mark fit a lot of the pieces of the puzzle. He has a very good eye. Even for filming video, he was always very careful about trying to create contrast. Even though we were going to be cutting quickly and using a lot of paper lanterns and low-wattage lights, he would try to really create strong visuals when I didn't have time to.

I could just trust Mark. Depending on how sets work and how well you trust people, there's an entire dynamic that happens when people try to insert their own voice, and Mark and I were always on the same page. At the time I'd give him a quick summary of what I wanted to do. He would start working on lighting while I would start working with the actors. Sometimes we would do the lighting together depending on the scene. Then by the time I had the actors up to speed, Mark would have the lighting together; he would start doing sound, and I would shoot. Then sometimes he would do B-camera. So he was constantly moving from one thing to the other--from lighting to sound to camera.

Also he had been involved pretty early on with the story process, so if I was starting to lose my perspective of where we were, he could step in and say quietly, "Think about this. Think about that," which was really great because on set I didn't have a producer, I didn't have an (assistant director), I didn't have all these other pieces of the puzzle that help the director sometimes step back and focus on the creative pieces. It was nice to have another creative person who, I think, was always spot on with what he was noticing and knew when to speak up and when it was better to just keep moving and lay low. That's invaluable for a director I think, especially in those intimate, small crew relationships.

The actors really trusted him too. Mark knew when to make a joke, make everyone laugh and ease the tension if everybody was tired. Or, he could say something to one of the actors to lighten the mood, or bring up something that they hadn't thought of.

I just can't say enough about him. There wouldn't really be a film without Mark. It's funny: you can't get by by yourself, but if you have one other person, who is really the right person, you can get done with just the two of you.

SM: Talking a bit more about what you and Mark were doing aesthetically, you'd said in an interview with Brandon Harris over at Cinema Echo Chamber that you were concentrated on beauty shots, which would essentially be these interstitial shots between the scenes of main emotional action. Part of the way that you went about shooting these was just to follow the actors around for a few hours with a camera. It's a much more naturalistic way to work, and so I was hoping you could tell me about that, going around with the actors and just doing these very fluid, everyday action sequences.

TQ: I shot B-camera for a film called The Other America, which opened Slamdance a few years ago by a filmmaker from Philadelphia named Eugene Martin. He's really amazing, and it's something I learned working with him on set. He would put aside several days to just be with the actors in their environment. You weren't rushed to get dialogue pieces or even parts that were in the script. You had time to film everyday life, and by doing that for a day or two, it really opens up a character on screen.

So, for instance, I would pick up Jenny, she'd put a wireless microphone on and we'd go down to the Italian market on 9th St. in Philadelphia. She'd just walk around and shop for maybe half an hour, an hour, and I would just tail her like a documentary would. The great thing was that all of the actors, even though this was their first time for the most part, were really good about making subtle choices about how they brought their character out in those sort of documentary interactions. They never pushed it too hard, but you could see in their faces the internal life of their characters.

In this instance with Kat going through the Italian market, doing all the shopping for the family, then coming home and doing the laundry, the cooking and the cleaning, and being ignored at the same time, brings a lot of her internal life to the surface without having a lot of dialogue or exposition that you might have to do otherwise.

I'm trying to think of a similar instance with Greg. Sometimes even if he was just bartending, we'd come down to this bar where some of the Mummers guys hang out, they set him up to tend bar while an Eagles game was on and I shot about an hour of him just bartending. Greg is a bartender, and so fortunately he could chart his way. It just brings this extra life to the characters, and it gives the actors time to do these half-hour long takes where they're not thinking, "Well, where's my mark? What's my next line of dialogue?" They're focused on the task of shopping, of tending bar or of whatever that is at the same time bringing out some internal life.

We carried that over to some of the narrative shooting as well. Some of the scenes, where it was just Kat and Jack talking, we'd maybe stretch them to a half an hour take and just let them talk to try to get a natural rhythm back and forth. Then we'd cut that down to the key narrative aspects.

SM: This makes me wonder, as a director, how do you see acting?...What is your approach to acting as a director?

TQ: What was interesting with this film was having the mix. Having Tobias Segal and Irene Longshore, both who have had a lot of acting experience, and then having a lot of first timers, and I think they both need different things to get to the same place. Then we have all these string band members who not only have never acted but aren't necessarily acting at all; we're sort of documenting their real life and intercutting that with the film. So, in order to keep those three types of actors on the same wavelength so that you can intercut all of the footage, it's just a process of getting to know each of them and sort of finding what works.

For the first time actors, in rehearsals, it seemed like the more we got away from the script, and the more they understood the character's internal lives and what they could connect to their own lives, the better off things got. So, for instance, with Kat, Jen kept a diary for a month or two on just what she'd go through each day as she was finishing up high school. Then she would also write new scenes. With Greg, he and I would talk for long periods of time about what Jack was going through. He would work with the string band members on props and costumes, talk to some of them to understand what they go through. Also, Greg, who is in a band, was getting ready to sign to a major label at that point, but they were in an in-between stage where they were struggling to break through, which is very similar to what Jack's going through in the film. We'd try to make those connections and talk about what these things felt like in ways that he could bring that part of his own life to the story. For the non-actors, they were always the best results.

For the trained actors, it was somewhere in the middle. They have a little bit more training to fall back on, so they know how to pull from their regular lives, and if there's nothing they can connect to, they know how to approximate it or fabricate it in a way that feels right. For them it was more about going through the script, understanding why certain lines were written, why certain scenes were there. Then they were also really good about using improv to shape a scene.

Then with the string band guys, they know what they're going through. At first we were giving them scripted scenes, but the things we were seeing them do in everyday life were so much more interesting and so much more specific that we stopped scripting for them altogether. For instance, the scene where Jack goes to Quaker City to ask about joining, we showed up that day, asked if anybody wanted to act and the two guys came. It was Greg's job to shape the scene because he was the one actor who really knew the full context of the film. We gave them the specifics of the situation, and they know that life well enough that they can just talk from the heart, and it comes off pretty genuine. Meanwhile, Greg can shape the narrative part of the scene by the questions he asks and the responses he gets.

So with each set of actors it was a little different, but the common thread is that you just try to get to a place that feels genuine, human and specific. Regardless of their process, they all have a way of getting there. It's just, as a director, figuring out what that is.

SM: So, in a sense, as a director, you become a guide to help people through their processes as opposed to a director for which there is a defined process that you want your actors to live through.

TQ: I think so because I know sometimes if I tried the wrong process with the wrong person--for instance, some people aren't as comfortable improving as others; I'd just through them a one sentence summary, and then we'd jump in--it was hard for them. Everybody has a different style, and it's my job to know what they're style is.

Since we had such a long process, which was great, once we got through the first couple of shoots, we didn't have to talk about that side of things anymore. It was very natural that if I hadn't shot with Greg in six months, we'd get together, know what we were doing and hit the ground running. It was the same thing with Jenny and the rest of the cast. It became so intuitive and natural by the end that I sort of took for granted the process part of it.

We'd done a four or five month rehearsal at the beginning. We started shooting for a few weeks. Then we had a good six months to nine months where we were just rewriting, doing some more reading together and just developing the characters. So, by the time we got to set, a lot of the process was built in to how we were interacting with each other.

Because it was such a small set--it would be two or three actors, myself and Mark, for the most part--it's more like hanging out, and our friendship was the process in a lot of ways. Just the way that we would talk to each other off camera and confide in each other is the same way that we set up a scenerio for them to express and then document it later.

SM: With a process that organic, it makes me wonder: Do you still yourself within it? Do you still see the original vision for the film now by its end?

TQ: It's surprising to me actually. Someone asked about the script recently, and I hadn't read the script in a while. I cracked it open, and it's actually amazing how close the final film is to the initial script. It's richer too at the same time because of the documentary aspects that the actors brought to the table. But, the overarching scenes and the overarching narrative are all still pretty much the same, and that's been really nice.

In a way it's like shooting a documentary where the documentarian can stand back, capture and shape the life and the reaction in front of the camera, but they're voice is still there, I think. For me it's just about trying to learn to have a light touch where I don't necessarily have to tell the actors to do it a specific way and can still get the piece that I'm interested in. And, a lot of times, I can get something better if they have the freedom to grow, especially when you have people working for as long a period of time [as we did] for no pay when they're not necessarily interested in going out to form an acting career. Their reward is the self-expression, and so I think it's very important for each of them to have their own voice in the film as well. It's been a nice collaboration in that sense.

SM: Do you also experience that self-expression, or is there some other reason that you're making films?

TQ: I think I do.

This was a funny story to jump into because my parents are together, and it took me a while to try to figure out why exactly I was interested. Obviously, my friends were the jumping point for it, caring about them, what they're going through and giving that a voice. But, as we went through, a lot of the themes of the film,...those themes of family and how the generations interact, I'm really interested in. A lot of the film I've worked on, even the short films, have dealt with those same themes. I didn't realize that exactly until the film was done, that a lot of the specific character moments and, I think, just the way characters interact, are all pieces I'm very interested in.

The script developed in a collaborative atmosphere, so it's not just my expression--it's the entire cast and crew's expression--but, I still feel that I have a guiding voice in that. It's a nice balance.

Much like this week's conversation with filmmaker Lena Dunham, this conversation will run in two parts. Check in next week for more on the film. In the meanwhile, visit the film's site at www.thenewyearparade.com.