Loadmovie won't work unless in _root

I’ve got an external .swf i’m trying to load into the current movie, but it won’t load and operate normally unless it is positioned at the original depth of _root. this is a problem as it means my button interface can’t play underneath the loading on seperate external swf movies. this is supposed to be like an online portfolio so this is a real problem.

any help would be greatly appreciated. have tried loading the buttons into different levels, but to no avail.

am currently simply using:-

_root.loadmovie(“target.swf”);