In 2025, Background Work enabled Canadians to host more than 7,000 background performances.
These are the spectators who filled the stands of the Sudbury Community Arena in Shoresey. These are townspeople frolicking around a huge Christmas tree in Hot frost. And those are the countless aspiring actors thinly filling the screens of Canadian-produced films and TV shows.
“There’s no limit to how it can be used because films are made the same way all over the world.”
Ilona Smith
Background work
They are extras, and as the CEO of a technology platform Background work Ilona Smith tells BetaKit that they are incredibly difficult to recruit and coordinate.
“Negotiating a very big deal for a leading role instead of trying to get 50 people as supporting actors?” Smith, who has worked as a casting director for more than 20 years, asked the question in an interview earlier this month. “To do the latter is much more difficult, and there is no tool.”
The fully-fledged Ottawa-based company, which launched just last year, has developed a platform for Canadian actors (that is, everyone!) to find and secure vetted and paying jobs on film sets for companies like Lifetime, Hallmark and Paramount.
“What we're trying to change is the way supporting actors fit into a film's fiction,” Smith said. “They are usually the last thing people think about.”
Background Work technology aims to bring additional capabilities to the forefront. Like many startups, it began as a solution to a niche problem: a simple and intuitive way for production companies to find extras for Canadian shoots. Smith, who runs Smyth Casting, contacted her co-founder Saman Raza, who runs a technology consulting firm with his partner Brian Belanger.
According to Raza, the collaboration was necessary to combine an understanding of how the Canadian film industry works with software know-how to develop an administrative tool that would help actors and production companies.
“We are in a marriage of sorts,” Raza said in an interview. “Ilona is the artist, and we are the brush.”
The work is currently subscription-based, with potential extras paying $99 a year to receive vetted jobs and access to educational resources about the film industry. The information is then passed on to casting directors, who can access the pool of talent in one place and book the roles they need. For Shoreseycomedy series about a senior AAA hockey team, the co-founders said uploading photos and videos through the platform was key to casting directors casting people who could actually skate.
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This year alone, the platform has hired more than 7,000 people in non-essential positions, mostly in Ontario, the co-founders said. According to the founders, the work is growing due to its niche. There are other digital casting tools, such as CastingBook, but these only focus on speaking roles rather than the sometimes more logistically challenging background casting.
The company's first year of operation comes at a challenging time for Canada's film industry, which is largely supported by a robust system of tax incentives. On the one hand, the threats of US President Donald Trump 100% rates on films created uncertainty. At the same time, Canadian-produced streaming shows continue to gain international recognition, e.g. North of the North And Heated rivalry.
In the future, the company aims to address the safety concerns of actors and production companies. Additional individuals are often required to upload and transfer personal information in order for companies to qualify for regional tax incentives, a process that Raza says is currently outdated and lacks adequate data security measures.
Besides facilitating casting for big hits like Hot Frosty And ShoreseyBackground Work is also ordering Michael Cera's directorial debut starring Pamela Anderson, which began filming in November in Carleton Place, Ontario.
The approximately 10-person company has a major upcoming project in Manitoba and is looking to gradually expand across Canada and then eventually around the world.
“There’s no limit to how it can be used because movies are made the same way all over the world,” Smith said.
Image courtesy of Bell Media.
