I REALLY need to head to bed, but first...

I've been working on this animation for days. The still is what it SHOULD look like (as it does in the preview), and the video is what it DOES look like after render. I have tried a lot of different settings to fix this. Any ideas? Is there a solution And if not, why show the preview this way at all? How do you even know what you're creating if you're doing it blind?

Anyway, gotta sleep, but meanwhile, HALP!!!!???