My name is Ron White and I am the 2009 and 2010 USA Memory Champion. In 2009, I competed in the World Memory Championships in London. While I didn’t do too well in the standings (about the middle of the pack 30th out of 60 people or something like that) I had a TON of fun!!!
Before the tournament and between events we would all sit around and laugh and share techniques it was an adrenaline rush! For 360 days a year you are around people that have no clue what you are talking about when you say ‘Character/Action/Object’ or talk about memory journeys. Then 3-5 days a year you get to hang out with people who not only ‘get it’ but LOVE IT! So much fun in 2009 at the World Memory Championship.
As we were all sharing techniques someone had an idea I had never thought of when creating a memory journey. He suggested taking your favoirte movie and the first scene is the first spot on your journey and the second scene is the second spot on your journey and so on. Fascinating! I must confess I have never thought of using a movie as a journey. But why not? Why not use a cartoon too? Or video game pattern?
Just an interesting idea I picked up at the 2009 World Memory Championships. Hope to see you at a memory tournament one day
I tried a movie journey a couple of times. Once for a movie I saw multiple times (Zoolander) and once I tried to create a journey the first time through a movie. I found it a bit unwieldy in both cases for some reason. I think maybe if I’d had the script with the scenes laid out it would have been a little easier. Maybe a trek or journey movie would be better.
Grey Matters has a great article right now on using online video creation tools for memory training. Grey Matters: Blog: THAT’S Memory Software?!? Grey Matters: Blog: THAT'S Memory Software?!?
I watch a lot of action animes and I use some as loci. But I find it takes longer to code because I have to create interactions between my objects or images and the action sequence.
Happy to see you here Mr. White. I’ve really enjoyed your accounts of the USA Memory Competitions, even when you lost in 2011. Hope to see you make a comeback in 2012!
I have played with this technique a bit. At first I tried to link things to the different scenes but I have come to believe it to be easier and quicker to use the locations in the movie. In hindsight this makes perfect sense to me because when we use a journey that we’ve created from real life we do not link things to whatever we happen to see going on at a time we created the journey. But we use the locations them selves has the loci.
Yes. This is what I’ve found. It’s the memorable background that’s important.
One of the things I found out early on, was to use loci as to mean - an object. More importantly it’s the background, the context in which you place the thing you want to remember - that’s the loci.
Personally, I mostly steer away from movies as a tool. If I use Godzilla trashing New York . . .I get side tracked remembering the rest of the movie.
