You’ve already read the great lengths some people go through to become famous. R.AGE’s cover story this week highlights the pains people will go through for a taste of fame.

Sharmila ”Sharm on the Scene” Nair herself (on Page 4) made an attempt at this during the recent E! News Asia auditions.

If you’re anything like her, however, you probably dislike being in front of the camera. But this doesn’t mean that you’re unable to share your creativy and thoughts with the rest of the world (okay, fine, we’ll start with Malaysia).

Enter Your Grandfather’s Road (YGR) movie project. The project, produced by Sunny Stories in collaboration with Popiah Pictures, aims to involve as many people as possible in their movie-making process.

And what better way to do this than via the Internet and social media?

The way YGR works is simple: for a few weeks, a select group of writers will share their stories on a daily basis at www.yourgrandfathersroad.com. The public is then invited to leave comments on these posts – sharing their own stories.

You don’t have to just share your stories via text, you can also opt to upload a video via YouTube and attach it to your comment. Similarly, you can attach photos as well.

Besides using Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic, YGR also introduced its Driver of the Week campaign where they get a variety of different personalities to share a story a day for a whole week.

Yours truly was the first Driver of the Week (I shared some pictures of me as a kid too but you’ll have to visit the site to see it!), and subsequently girl drifter Leona Chin and popular blogger Joyce ”Kinkybluefairy” Wong have taken the driver’s seat.

It would be interesting to see the progress of a site like this. Crowd-sourcing is an integral element of social media, and a project like this would be a good indication of whether or not it works in Malaysia.

Besides sharing stories, the YGR creators are also inviting aspiring actors to audition online. After all the stories have been compiled, and a script drafted, Sunny Stories will open a call for videos where anyone can upload to YouTube and submit their audition videos to get a role in the movie. This means that anyone – with or without prior acting experience – has an equal chance at getting a part in this planned road movie.

YGR may have generated quite a buzz online, and have also attracted the attention of sponsors, but it will also be looking to the public, via the crowd-funding method, to help support the project monetary wise.

Depending on the amount contributed, YGR will offer credit mentions and invites to the movie premiere, among other things.

From a social media perspective, I do hope that this project works. We haven’t yet had a project of this scale in Malaysia that requires solely online participation and YGR would be a good test to see how the Malaysian cybersphere responses to such activities.