KEN CARLSON & LYQUOC VO FIND COLLABORATION IRRESISTIBLE >>>

Last year, Olympia filmmaker Ken Carlson and his team, Mutually Assured Productions, embarked on an experiment. They decided to build their very own film festival from scratch, calling it the Olympia Awesome Film Festival. This one-day event debuted in May, successfully attracting short movies and their makers from across Washington and beyond. OAFF exuded a laid-back style that showed potential to widen its fan base and stick around for years to come.

But alas, sometimes you have to shelve a great idea to make way for an even better one. With 2012 here, Carlson could either foster his fledgling fest into its second year, or quit while ahead and move on. He went with door number two.

"(OAFF) was fun to do," says Carlson, "but it was a lot of work and ... not necessarily something that we (Mutually Assured) wanted to focus our efforts in that direction. I decided that I would much rather be ... making films as opposed to hosting film festivals."

Already he's found a project to replace OAFF: writing and producing a feature-length concept with fellow Olympia resident and friend Lyquoc Vo. They haven't yet given away too many plot details of Irresistible (a working title), other than the tough heroine is loosely based on the "femme fatale" archetype of film noir. And given Mutually Assured's track record, it wouldn't surprise me to see violence make a cameo.

Carlson and Vo began collaborating over a decade ago on a sketch comedy program called Damnit, This Is Stupid. Though neither one has tackled a movie of this size before, ideas for scenes and characters have flowed quickly - a sure sign of a good partnership.

Besides working with Carlson, Vo has enjoyed watching Irresistible grow and evolve and almost take on a life of its own. "It's pretty fun actually, thinking about these characters in a different light each day," he says.

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Watch Mutually Assured's short films at mutuallyassured.com. Hear more from Ken Carlson and Lyquoc Vo this week on Volcano Radio, which airs Thursday from 8-9 P.M. on www.nwczradio.com and is available as a podcast at weeklyvolcano.com and on iTunes directly following.