Not sure about 1, but for 2:

I try and break (Consciously) at the hips first. Then as I need the movement, and as I feel my posterior stretch, I start to bend at the knee’s. I think ideally, the 2 hinges move at the same time with the right amount of tension – but I could be a bit off on this.

The biggest cue that always helps me is to imagine, when descending into a squat, that the world is coming up beneath you, and you have to bring your legs up and sit your pelvis in between them. I got this from a think Dan John, who used the que “imagine pushing the world down with your legs”. I love queue’s like this, especially when you can start to extrapolate new queue’s of the same premise to different movements.