Preloading a gallery with a scrollpane

I think I have encountered something really really weird…
If I have a movie with a bunch of pictures displayed on the main stage I can use the preloader and it will work, however if I put the pictures in a movieclip so that I can add the scrollpane component it will not show the preloader . . . . It will just download the data and the boom the scrollpane (gallery) comes up…

any ideas? am I not being specific enough ?