flash woes

For quite some time - I've been intending to swap out project pedal's main page, with a less overwhelming-design. My great idea was to use flash to design a very simple main page with two links. The first being a link to the film related info [synopsis, mock trailer, etc...], and a second link to the blog you're reading right now. As a visual - I sketched the picture below with the fattest sharpie I could find:


This is actually, now that I look at it, a terrible example of what I actually have in mind, forget you ever saw it. The dark thick line that separates the road from the two links, I wouldn't have it - same goes for the thick lines between "film" and "blog", the only distinction between to the two would be the 'selected link' would be black text, and the 'inactive link' would be a light-gray text. Third; the road image above wouldn’t be an image – it would be a movie... this is where the real trouble begins, to explain:

I have a video clip in mind that I think would work well - but [keeping visitors with slower connections in mind] I'd like to set-up a "loading" screen above the two links to let people know that "something" is happening, and to please be patient. Inner monologue: “So, a ‘loading...’ screen, that can't be too difficult, right?”

It's now been weeks, and I've spent many random late-nights staring blankly at my computer screen... going over countless tutorials... all hopped up on pepsi... with nothing to show for it [but carpal-tunnel and poor night vision]. Here is the video clip I'd like to loop in my flash file:

I'm not 100% sure why I'm sharing any of this - maybe I'm hoping some overwhelmingly generous flash guru will send me an email with the answers to all my web page problems. Or maybe I’m just writing to watch myself type… that doesn’t quite work as well as “talking to hear yourself talk”.

It's late and I'm two hours past tired, so 'goodnight'.