Someone suggested to me the idea of using movies and shows to create journeys. I don’t fully understand how that would work exactly. I don’t understand how you would link the scenes of a movie to the information you need to remember. Could someone please help me understand how this works? I can’t seem to grasp the concept.
You can link the data you want to memorize with movie scene actors and objects (they work as loci). An example is given in this comment.
But first you should place your scenes into a memory palace (for various reasons, mainly because of being able to memorize the scenes in order and giving them 3D structure) (also illustrated in that comment).
Wouldn’t putting a scene at a loci make it a 1:1 Ratio of using up one loci to get a new loci. I dont see how you can maximize space with it. How would make more than one loci out of a scene?
I’m sorry, but I still can’t wrap my head around the movie method or Gavino’s MMP. I’ve been trying to understand it for days because it seems like it could be really beneficial, but, for the life of me, I can’t understand it. Would you mind explaining it more. Again, Sorry for the inconvenience.
I didn’t first understand gavino either :D, but before reading his topic I had already started placing movie scenes and I grasped that what I am doing is actually making a Massive Memory Palace using movie scenes.
So, what gavino himself says:
1. Pick a journey or memory palace and select some loci Let’s use our homes as memory palaces. There are many loci we can use - many rooms and objects. We usually want to memorize things in order, so we choose certain loci in a certain order and we get a journey in the memory palace. For example we pick 1. Doorstep 2. Clothes hanging on the coat-racks. 3. Sofa in the living room 4. TV in the living room 5. Bed
2. Into the loci you selected you place extra loci. These extra loci can be for example movie scenes or real life locations. Let’s use both:
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On the doorstep we place the Statue of Liberty, next to it we place the Oval Office (of White House), and thirdly a movie scene from Titanic - the young lovers (Jack and Rose) hanging on the edge of the ship. Now there are 3 extra loci on the doorstep. Will we be able to recall all these three by just looking at the doorstep? Usually with difficulty, I could remember that I placed there Titanic and Statue of Liberty, but I forgot the Oval Office. For solving this problem Gavino suggests using pegs - a prememorized list of objects. My 1st peg is wand, second is swan and third is pig (for me they resemble number 1, 2 and 3 respectively). Now I have to associate the pegs with extra loci. I visualize that 1) Liberty Woman is holding wand instead of her torch 2) The president of US is a swan that sits on its chair in the Oval Office 3) Pig gives a push to the young lovers and they both fall over the board into the icy waters . Now I can recall the extra loci on the doorstep by recalling in which loci the wand, swan and pig were on that doorstep.
Note: I usually don’t bother to use the pegs, instead I link the extra loci with each other. For instance Titanic crushes into the Liberty Woman, that falls onto Oval Office and lits it on fire with it torch, president runs out and jumps into icy waters to cool himself. -
I repeat the same process at 2.nd locus (coat rack). Only this time could use more extra loci, let’s say 4 of them, and this time they are all different movie scenes from Titanic. And again I use pegs (now I could use my 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th peg) and/or linking to remember the scenes.
And the same goes for loci 3,4 and 5, into each goes 4 extra loci.
Now we have 3+4+4+4+4 = 19 extra loci that I can easily recall. And that’s not all- as I said in my previous comment, each movie scene has actually many more loci we could use. E.g. the first Titanic scene - there are two actors, both count as separate loci. If I’m very thorough, I could even use the scene to remember a whole list. E.g. “lamp, suite, elephant, rocket and bottle of vodka”. The story would be: A guard enters the deck, flashes his flashlight at Jack and says: “Could you please take off your suite, sir, so I could check if your rocket is the size of an elephant.” Drunken Rose drinks more vodka, shatters the bottle and uses what’s left of it to cut off Jack’s manlyhood and shows it to the guard: “See?! I fell in love with a man whose balls aren’t bigger than my nipples.”
My movie scene placement system
As you by now surely understand that my movie scene placement system is actually a special case of gavino’s MMP system. It’s a special case because I don’t use pegs and I reach the 4 extra loci per locus by using 4 different journeys (actually 2 journeys, I just change the direction of the journeys and thus both journeys count as two) that all cross the same locus. I you look the pictures at my google site you can see for example that into the locus where I placed the 2nd scene of Lisbon, I also placed Gandalf fighting Balrog, then a potential movie scene from movie 3 and another one from movie 4.
For recalling all the scenes in that locus you need to look at the different sides of that locus: for recalling the Balrog scene you look the wall that goes in the direction of Gandalf story, for recalling the Lisbon scene you look the opposite direction.
And when you want to use the scenes to memorize info, I suggest you follow the scene journeys (as I did with Gandalf at my webpage), not to pick all the 4 scenes from different movies of the same locus (the lisbon, balrog, and 3rd 4th movie example).
I added some extra info to this wiki page about using the both directions of journey to memorize 2 different lists of items.
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Thank you for your help. Would you mind if I asked more questions. I’m starting to understand more of it. But some concerns I have with it are:
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If you are using the same loci but with multiple journeys going backwards, forward, and both sides, Won’t you get a little confused with what scene would be there? I know you said to remember your perspective, but what if you are viewing it at a similar angle but it starts two different journeys?
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How exactly do you place scenes in loci? even though I’m starting to understand how to encode info in the scenes, I still don’t understand how to place a scene or something massive like the oval office?
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Then linking will help. In my previous comment I linked 3 different “scenes” with each other (statue, oval office and Titanic) . Linking the scenes of the same movie is even easier, especially if all these scenes are a story of the same actor (actually the actor IS the link between these scenes). To get the extra loci of the room you remember what was the second scene of Lisbon’s story and what was the second scene of Gandalf’s story.
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This comment might be useful.
So when you place a scene, you place the essence of the scene like the actors and some set pieces, but you dont actually teleport there. I was thinking the entire time that it acted like a portal to the scene of the movie that just stood out as a big window. Do you think that way would work better or as well as yours? Also do you have to space the loci out at all, or can they be bunched near each other?
No, each **scene has on average 2 actors and at least 2 objects. That makes on average 4 loci per scene, making the ratio 4:1. And since you use the same locus in 4 different direction (from back to front, then front->back, then right->left and finally left->right), you are actually putting 4 scenes at a locus, making ta ratio (4*4):1 = 16:1 . So, this really is gavino’s MMP system (placing many loci into a single locus), just better organized.
**I had incorrectly written “movie”
You can also put several scenes into one locus using the same direction, making the ratio even bigger. Then it is usually just harder to memorize all the scenes.
But there are some exceptions, for example if the scenes take place in the same house in the rooms that are adjacent to each other (you can visualize them being adjacent). Then putting the house at a locus can be done, because you remember that in that house you had 2 rooms (meaning actually you put 2 scenes at that locus).
Of course this may break actor-related placement system (if different actors at the different rooms of the house).
I suggest you find yourself suitable situations when this can be done.
The second idea of placing a movie into a locus is to give it 3D shape, which it lacks (when you watch it, you see it more like 2D). E.g. when placing a scene into a empty room you stretch it out in depth, meaning you can also more easily watch the actors from the side or even from their back if you wanted to.
Not to mention this only works when the locus itself is 3D, not a poster on the wall or something like that.
Portals work as well, but I think placing the scene itself is more beneficial. As I said in the 3rd comment the 2nd purpose of the placement is to give the scene a 3D perspective, to transform it from image-like thing into a real location, where you can move around. I have noticed that when the scene has 3D perspective then the data I attach to it is more memorable.
Bunching two loci tightly side-by-side is not so good, because then they both have the same background and position and our brain tends to confuse them. Spacing them is better.
When I say portals, I mean more as you step through them to see the scene, and then step out of them when you extract the info from it. Also when you said placing the 3 objects at the doorstep, i assumed they were side by side. How else did you organize their positions? I also have a bit of issues with visualizing the details of a scene or mnemonic image. I always only see the general gist of it rather than the full details. Do you have any advice on that front as well?
But if you are putting something that massive in front of the doorstep, how do you imagine entering the house since it takes up most of the space? And for an example of portals, if you ever played super mario 64 it would be similar to a painting in that game but it would be in motion. And thank, Im happy to know im not the only one who cant visualize the scene in great detail. Also wouldn’t portals be more space efficient since they would fit easier in more places than putting the actual scene?
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No I meant the two mini-houses take so much space as possible on that doorstep, they don’t expand into my house. They are still miniature.
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Of course they would. If you want to use as little space as possible then use portals.
But the problem of portals having no depth still remains. I propose a solution:
Let’s say I have Statue of Liberty, Oval Office and Titanic on the doorstep but I also want to press the model of Golden Bridge (GB) on the doostep. But I feel that there is just no space for it. I could do as you suggest and hang the poster-portal of the GB on the door.
Problem:GB has no depth (1. portal is not memorable 2. it is not good locus for remembering info while still being on that doorstep, you have to enter the portal and teleport somewhere else)
Solution: On your doorstep you see that the GB expands into the big house (takes some space behind the door). And while you still being on the doorstep you fill the expanded GB with info. When you change your point of view, e.g. enter the big house, then expanded GB dissapears (turns back into poster-portal hanging on the door) and frees the space it just occupied. Now you can use this free space behind the door to put something other there.
So, everything depends on your point of view (just like it did with the actor’s-scenejourneys in my movie-placement system)
So what your saying is that in theory the portals would be like a 2d figure at any other perspective except one particular perspective that causes it to looks like a 3d figure. Would this be better, equal to, or worse than the method of using it as a 3d figure entirely like the way you use it?
Also Besides movies could we use things like trailers, show episodes, etc.?
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I don’t use 100% 3D figures. Lisbon’s 2nd scene, Gandalf fighting balrog, {3rd scene of the 3rd journey of the 3rd movie} and {1st scene of the 3rd journey of the 4th movie} all occupy the same locus. Each of these movie scenes in my system can be seen only from one direction (or if you want then also from some other direction, but still one journey at the time).
This gives them maximum space possible (this is what I meant when I said the 2nd system uses free space most efficiently at my homepage).
And I think this is more effective than using 100% 3D figures, because then in order to press 4 scenes into the same locus (see them all at the same time) the scenes would have to be shrinked (as they are in gavino’s MMP system, that’s why gavino calls them mini-locations). Everything that is small is harder to memorize (the orbit and cigarette pack example). -
Sure. You can use anything that you can see.
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Try both. I personally like real stuff more. I mean at the locus I have free space where I can easily put the entire scene. If on my desk lays a big model of Titanic that I can touch with my hands and fly into it, then the fact that there was a ship on my table is more memorable rather than that there was a portal which took me to a ship.
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I meant that when your objects are very small, then putting them side by side isn’t memorable. E.g. when placing a little pack of orbit gum and cigarette pack next to each other in the center of the doorstep is far less memorable than placing two large houses next to each other on that doorstep (I visualize that the houses take so much space as possible, this means they occupy most of the background). From this we can deduce that in order to make the gum and cigarette pack more memorable we should magnify them, or place them at seperate loci (gum pack to the left side and cigarette pack to the right side) (and in the first case they actually also occupy the left and right side of the doorstep).
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It’s a matter of practise. We have to make a choice on which thing we concentrate. I think I also see the main gist of an image. Some card deck memorizers are so fast that they only see a glimpses of images, but it is enough for them to memorize the whole deck. You don’t have to see the entire image in deep detail, it’s usually enough to concentrate on the key part of the image. Like in that Titanic example concentrate on flashlight flashing, an image of Jack taking of his suit, the image of Jack’s penis substituted with rocket and something that associates with bottle of vodka, like the hand movement when it shatts the bottle and the bottle breaking . It’s important that their locations are fixed, e.g. vodka bottle is shattered against the armrest of the deck. Not much attention to turn on the side objects of the scene - like Rose’s appearence or the color and material of the deck.
so how many angles do you use for each loci?
When not considering my movie placement system, then at least 2 (forward and backward), but I try to aim for 4 (use 90 deg angles too). If I place movies, then all the 4.
I could also make journeys under 45 degrees (+n*90 deg), I haven’t yet tried that. I think in case of journeys it would work. But I belive in case of single locus using 45 degree angle would be too confusing.