For nearly five years, makeup artist Todd McIntosh has given viewers weekly frights and visual delights on the Warner Bros. Network show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With lab work by John Vulich’s Optic Nerve Studios and on-set makeup application by McIntosh, Buffy represents the best of TV makeup work, with one Emmy Award and five nominations to date. Creating makeups for
television has always been a difficult task marked by tight budgets and even tighter schedules, but with McIntosh, Buffy offers cinema-quality work. Based on the 1992 film of the same name, Buffy allows McIntosh the opportunity to regularly indulge in a variety of makeup challenges, with
vampires, demon makeups and innovative monsters of all kinds.

Though born in Santa Rosa, California, Todd McIntosh was raised and first worked in Vancouver, Canada, where he grew to love makeup, with Dick Smith’s vampire makeup on Dark Shadows becoming the character that most made McIntosh want to become a makeup artist. “My first professional job being paid for makeup was with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1978,” McIntosh recalled. “I didn’t stay there very long and went freelance shortly after that. There was really no special makeup projects in Vancouver at the time.”

After teaching makeup for several years, something he still does sporadically, McIntosh got into the Canadian union, Local 891, on the film Clan of the Cave Bear, assisting Michele Burke and later Michael Westmore. “Michael taught me a huge amount,” McIntosh noted. “He took what he saw as raw material and trained me in how to do prosthetics properly.” After working on other Westmore films, McIntosh left in 1990 to discover Hollywood. “I was stagnated,” he remembers, “so I had to make that move. I wish I had done it sooner.” The move led to projects culminating in Buffy.

Buffy’s television life began after original screenwriter Joss Whedon agreed to executive produce the show, provided that he was given complete control. The show went ahead in November 1996 with McIntosh hired to work on set and Optic Nerve running the lab work. For McIntosh, the daily process allows him adequate creative flexibility. “I’ll wake up in the morning at 4:00,” McIntosh
reflected. When I step outside the door, a whole box of Optic Nerve’s vampire appliances is sitting there on my front porch. I really love whatever they come up with. I haven’t been disappointed yet.”

Since Optic Nerve doesn’t have the time to manufacture appliance makeups well in advance, there
is no time for tests. As a result, what McIntosh puts on actors in the morning goes directly on camera. “Generally, it generates a certain excitement about the makeup, but you have to be a really practiced makeup artist to work in those conditions,” McIntosh noted. “To me, the vampire designs are not what is spectacular about Buffy. It’s the volume of work that we have, with so many prosthetics on screen at one time.” We are sure to get many more exciting makeups from Todd McIntosh in the future.

About the Author
Scott Essman has been writing about makeup and movie craftsmanship since 1995. As part of his company, Visionary Cinema, Essman has also created memorable tributes to makeup history, including special events to honor Dick Smith, John Chambers, and Jack Pierce. In 1998, his tribute to the makeup for “The Wizard of Oz” was celebrated on Hollywood Boulevard at the historic Mann’s Chinese Theater. In 2000, Essman published his first book, “Freelance Writing for Hollywood,” and that same year, he published a 48-page special magazine about the work of Universal Studios’ makeup legend, Jack Pierce. In 2001, he was joined with Universal to nominate Pierce for a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame.

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