Captive dreams?

Last night, I had the strangest dream--all night, it seemed. It was like viewing snippets of the same  movie, sometimes out of sequence, sometimes with a slightly different cast or plot twist. And I couldn't escape it. I'd sleep, wake, sleep again, and there it would be. It would make a great book, provided I can remember enough of it.

Stephanie Meyer's Twilight books famously came from a dream, and I've heard other authors echo this sentiment, but it's never worked that cleanly for me. I'll have some fantastic dream, then in my half-awake state decide that it's so amazing I'll definitely remember it in the morning, only to wake up hours later with nothing but fragments. 

This isn't to say that dreams haven't influenced my writing. Often times I'll figure out a plot twist or fill in details about a character or get snippets of a scene, but that's almost exclusively if I've been writing before bed and I fall asleep thinking about that world. World-building from the ground up has never made the transition from sleeping to waking for me... but this time it just might.

Do you remember vivid details from your dreams? Help me out--how do you record them? Have you trained yourself to be more aware during your dreams, so you can remember them?