Another dream question

Ok so last night i had my alarm set for 2am and 3:45am so that i could record my dreams, and finally 6:30am so that i could get up for school. When i woke up at both 2am and 3:45am i could not remember what i was dreaming. My first question is going to be...since i have to move to turn off the alarm, could that be causing me to forget my dream/dreams since i have to focus on turning the alarm off??? Lastly, when i woke up at 6:30, i remembered what i believe to be one dream. It was a VERY weird dream and involves 3 or 4 completely different scenes. I did not recognize and of the people or places in my dream. I was just wondering if these 4 different scenes was just one dream...with four different scenes, or could it have been 3 or 4 dreams that i just happened to remember together. Thanks for everything! :happyme:

Doubtful that the moving caused such forgetfulness. You merely didn't "hit" a REM period.
Finding them out is a matter of trial and error. For instance I deduced the perfect times for me to wake up from a REM period by recording sleep and waking times for about a week. I then realized that when I go to sleep at 11 PM and wake up at 7 AM I wake up during or right after a REM period, same with going to sleep at midnight and waking at 8 AM.

REM periods get longer throughout the night and the intervals in between them get shorter from 1.5 hours at the beginning of the night and less yet on towards the morning. However calculating them ahead of time isn't a very exact method.

Thus, if you are merely training dream recall and not attempting techniques such as WILD I would say that it's not even worth it waking in the middle of the night. Use trial and error with recording sleep and waking times, record them and then deduce a pattern of when you wake up in or soon after a REM period as well as how clearly you remember the dream(s) each time. There will certainly be a pattern and thus you will then be able to select when to set the alarm clock on in the morning (however the same can be done for pattern tracking at night) in order to wake up and remember a dream or dreams.

What I find works better than an alarm, is to "program" yourself to wake up immediately following a dream. When you are trying to go to sleep, repeat to yourself (silently) "I will awaken after I dream, and I will remember the dream". You may not get results the first time you do this, but eventually your brain should get the idea and wake you up right after a dream, and hopefully the memory of it will still be fresh in your mind.

As for the shifting dream scenes, I think that that trait may just be common in certain people. In my dreams I'm always moving around and there are always lots of characters that are present. I think it just depends on the kind of person, but unless you're waking up it's all just one dream.

-Amé