Accessing Nested Movieclips

Hi,

I’m copying over a post I made on another forum in hopes that someone can help me here.

I have a movie clip (assigned to a class) with several keyframes. Each keyframe consists of another movieclip, which contains an animation and all use the same name. Lastly, several of the animations contain a third movieclip, which is also assigned to a class and also use the same name. I need the first movieclip to speak to the third, unfortunately, it simultaneously tells me that the clips in the second layer (the ones at the keyframes) exist and do not exist. Namely:

[LIST]
[]The second layer “does not exist” in that the primary movieclip has only one child: a null. If I add other movieclips to the primary’s frames, they also report back as nulls depending on what frame I’m on. I’ve tested this in several parts of the code, though I suppose it’s possible that I managed to pick five equally bad spots. It’s just so bizarre I still don’t know what to think about it.
[
]However, the second layer of named clips are there, but I can only prove it by deliberately breaking the code in hopes of deliberately getting a reference error (by attempting to make the clip private, which isn’t allowed given my setup). Since the error does occur, I can only assume that the clip does exist, under that name, but it is also a null with no name (??) according to the point just above.
[/LIST]

Can anyone tell me what’s wrong? Is it the fact that they have the same names, perhaps? If so, how can I refer to them if I have to change that?